Gaiden with a difference
by incandescens
Summary: The Gaiden taken in a different direction. What if Homura had become Toushin Taishi before everything collapsed? Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, and what is done is done.
1. Messages

Messages   
  
_"Halfbreed brat."_   
  
The words rang in Homura's ears as he swayed and caught himself, rocked back on his feet by the force of the blow. The room spun around him, tilted, then resettled, and he spat blood onto the table. The lamp which hung above was still swinging from side to side, casting leaping shadows on the room, the faces around him, the man who'd just struck him. "Can't you think of any better insults?" he spat back, wishing that he could.  
  
The General swaggered a step towards him. A half-smoked cigarette still hung from a corner of his mouth, twitching as he spoke. "Give me a moment, kid, I'll come up with something. And what are you doing in a man's drinking establishment?"  
  
The soldiers who had suggested that he come along here were somewhere in the mob pressing back to the walls, making sure that there was enough space for this bit of entertainment.All those faces, all those wolfish glaring _hungry_ faces, wanting just a bit of blood to spice up their evening. All these people, and he felt even more alone than he had done in his cell.  
  
"I came to drink," he said, stressing the second word.   
  
It hadn't been one of his more brilliant ideas, admittedly. It had been another evening of cold moonlight and empty stars and empty bed and silence. Another evening of the cold knowledge of failure and powerlessness and rage which ate his soul out from the inside and left him empty.  
  
Another evening of wanting her, and knowing that he would never have her again, and wondering how much of it was his own fault.  
  
The General leaned one fist on the table next to him. A wine-jar swung at his hip, an overt display of rebellion. _Nobody punishes him for it, though._ "You don't get it. This is a place where soldiers drink. Fighting men. You know anything about fighting, kid?"  
  
_I know how much good it does me_, he would have said, but that wouldn't have moved a single muscle of that smirking face. _Kenren. General Kenren. A walking scandal._ Standing there with that swaggering arrogance and casual pride and certainty, so at ease with himself and with the world around him, so innocently confident, moving through the room with the same harshness as a bearded comet swinging through the skies of earth.  
  
It would have been sensible to say, _I'll go_, and walk out. He'd come here because some of the soldiers had called to him in the first place, inviting him to one of the establishments which everyone knew weren't supposed to exist in Heaven -- ideal, perfect Heaven -- but which did anyhow. _Cells aren't supposed to exist in Heaven either, are they? Cells where you lock your misbegotten itan children away to forget about them?_ "I know enough," he said, and found his mouth curving into an unchancy smile as he spoke. "I'm here to drink. Why are you here, General Kenren?"  
  
"Well, you know . . ." The General met his eyes. They were the same height. "I think I'm here for a fight. You got anything to say to that?"  
  
Homura saw his future in front of him, as clear as his reflection in a mirror. Endless days in the white marble colonnades of Heaven, endless kneeling to the Emperor, endless loss, endless _nothingness_. And he looked at the General who stood there, still smirking, so untouched by anything that could possibly resemble grief or loss, and fire knotted in his stomach and kindled in his groin and shook him, as fire makes wood jerk and twist in the burning, and whispered in his ears, and was suddenly so necessary to him, in wrath and bitterness and the urge to strike out, that he could not imagine ever being without it again.  
  
"Oh yes."  
  
He struck, both hands together, in a swinging blow at the General's head. The other man dodged, sliding away from the blow to a raucous yell of cheering from the soldiers pressed back against the walls, and came back with a snap kick at Homura's stomach.  
  
_A touch slow, and rather obvious_, Homura thought, and then it was a matter of quick duck and strike and duck again and then slide back just as the General was doing to catch a moment's breath and survey the other.  
  
"Not bad," the General said. He wasn't even breathing fast. "Perhaps there is something to you after all. You're man enough to get a woman in trouble, after all . . ."  
  
Through the killing rage that swept through him, Homura could hear the laughter, the snickers, the casual amusement -- _and why should it mean anything to them, she was just a woman, just . . ._  
  
He hit out at the General.  
  
_a . . ._  
  
And again.  
  
_woman . . ._  
  
And yes, the General was sweating now, was actually having to work to avoid his strikes, there was a thin trickle of blood down one cheek, but he wanted to hurt the other, to make him feel something in return, to slide the edge in and work it until it went deep. "Oh, really." Recent gossip came to mind, bitter and spicy as all the meanest taunts were. "Well, why don't you go and find yourself a woman elsewhere -- or a Marshal, if that's more to your taste . . ."  
  
He saw the blow coming before he could finish speaking. It wasn't as telegraphed as the previous ones, but there was a raw anger to it which had been lacking earlier. He brought his arm up in time to deflect the brute force of it, but even so the impact sent him staggering back into the waiting wall of soldiers. Hands caught him, balanced him, shoved him back into the fight.  
  
The General kicked his feet out from under him before he saw the blow coming, and slammed him down on the floor, coming down on the small of his back. The floor tiles seemed to glow and spin in slow motion as he fought for breath. An arm came round his throat, pulling his head back.  
  
The shouting and jeering in the background slowed its pulse, faded to a steady stamping beat.  
  
So this was death. Admittedly it wasn't the death he'd expected, even anticipated. But she was dead to him and he would never see her again, and the weight of that dragged him down as the air left his body and the pulse of noise slowed. One hand crawled up to pull at the General's throttling arm, straining against the chain which was trapped under his body, but there was no real force to it. This was what it came to in the end, the smell of wine and sweat and the rising red darkness and perhaps silence and nothingness and true emptiness afterwards with no guilt, all the guilt over, all the debts paid.  
  
The General was whispering something in his ear, his cheek warm against the side of Homura's head. The regular stamping beat nearly drowned it out, but the words got through somehow.  
  
"Do you want revenge, kid?"  
  
The words meant something. They arranged themselves into a configuration which he could recognise, which he could _use_.  
  
"You want revenge, you show me that you can fight."  
  
_and this was all of Heaven and all of Under Heaven, this arm crushing his throat and cutting off his air, the Emperor saying that she had been sentenced to Earth, the sneering faces, the polite withdrawals, the casual assumption of priviledge, the constant use, the walls of his cell and the darkness, all the same thing but wearing different faces, everything coming down to this single point_  
  
Homura brought one flailing elbow back up and into the General's face. Something gave. The pressure around his throat slackened a fraction, just enough for him to get the fingers of his left hand under the leather-sleeved arm and haul it away, just enough for a breath of air that felt like fire in his lungs.  
  
The stamping had stopped. Now they were laughing, but it wasn't the same mob noise -- it was individual laughter, with the tension broken and dissipated. The General had let go of him. He was still working on breathing, air in, air out, anger still singing through him but dissipating like water, undirected, draining away. Someone was pulling him to his feet and he could stand now, he wasn't swaying that much, and someone else had tossed him his cape and he hadn't even noticed losing that.  
  
Now he was sitting down and someone had put a cup of wine in front of him. Nobody else was actually sitting at his table, but they weren't trying to avoid him, either. It was . . . a normal place, a normal world, normal people, normal things, people talking and drinking.  
  
He wasn't used to this.  
  
The General had left. A pity. Of course, Homura wasn't sure whether he wanted to apologise to him or to try to kill him, but it was still a pity that he'd gone before Homura could make his mind up.  
  
There was a piece of paper folded under the cup of wine. He palmed it as he lifted the cup and drank from it. The wine was sweet, mingling with the taste of his own blood and washing it away.  
  
Later, in the starlit shadows of the Heavenly street, when he was quite sure that nobody was watching, he opened it and read it.  
  
**If you are not yet resigned to being a slave, and if you want help against your need, then come to the arbour where yesterday they were viewing the cherry-trees, and come at the second hour after midnight tomorrow.**  
  
The script was strange to him -- a scholar's hand, perhaps, certainly an educated man's writing -- and there was no signature.  
  
Homura leaned against the wall, and considered. Thoughts swarmed in his mind like the stars in the night above -- unpatterned, complex, self-contradictory -- but each one of them was a light against the darkness.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	2. Dirty Work

Dirty Work   
  
"Sit still." Tenpou's hand rested briefly on the back of his neck, as the other hand positioned a wad of tissues under his nose. "Now let it bleed till it's done."  
  
"Hell of a thing," Kenren grumbled. "Having a nosebleed in front of all the soldiers. Not good for morale. General Kenren gets his nose smashed by a punk kid who he picked on in the first place . . ." He snorted blood into the tissues, and Tenpou wordlessly passed him a new handful. "Thanks."  
  
"He's _itan_," Tenpou said, as though that explained everything. "Nobody's sure of what an _itan_ can do. Your men will probably forget about it."  
  
"He's a _kid_," Kenren said, trying to get the word through to Tenpou.  
  
"Yes, I know." Tenpou adjusted his glasses, looked out at the room through them, came to the clear conclusion of _these are dirty_ and took them off to wipe at them with the tail of his coat. The lamplight gleamed on them greasily.   
  
"So." Another wad of tissues. The wastebasket next to him, filling up with soggy paper and cigarette butts, smelt of his own scorching blood. "Why is it so important that I go and beat up on this _kid_?"  
  
"Anh." Tenpou looked at his glasses again, as though trying to work out how much cleaner they were. "Because I couldn't."  
  
"Yo." The same as always, just the same as always . . . Kenren reached a long leg across and kicked the side of Tenpou's desk. Papers and books on the surface shivered and jumped. A couple of scrolls slid off, rattling down to the floor and lying there in the dust. "Hey, Marshal. It's your taishou talking to you here. You got a reason for me to do your dirty work, I like to hear what it is."  
  
Tenpou looked at him, dark brown eyes soft and mild without the shield of his glasses, face shuttered and silent. He reached down to the pack next to him, extracted a cigarette, and lit it. "You might want to think about why I asked you to do it rather than do it myself," he said.  
  
"Yeah, that one I can see. You don't want Litouten knowing you're interested in the _kid_." He accented the word again, trying to get a reaction out of Tenpou. "So tell me, is that to protect the _kid_, or you?"  
  
"You know that there have been times when there was more than one toushin taishi at once?"  
  
"Yeah, but --" He sat bolt upright in his chair. "Oh, shit, no, Tenpou. You have to be joking."  
  
Tenpou looked at him, eyes dark and focused now. That look of concentration always got to him, made him tighten, made his breath catch. It was one thing to be lying with -- no, call it fucking, that was what it was -- Tenpou Gensui, Marshal of the Western Army. It was another and entirely different thing to be holding onto someone with that degree of edge. _Be careful or I'll cut you and you'll bleed._ "No. Not at all."  
  
"So what are you trying to do, set yourself up opposite Litouten?" The words came out before he could really hear what he was saying.  
  
Tenpou shook his head, once. "I need to weaken Litouten's powerbase. That is Nataku. If Nataku becomes less important, then so does Litouten. He's a cancer in Heaven, Taishou. You know that." Each word was paid out carefully, judged and measured to convince.  
  
"And the kid?"  
  
"He's an _itan_. He was strong enough to bloody your nose. He's not defenseless."  
  
"Does he know what he's getting into?"  
  
Tenpou resettled his glasses on the bridge of his nose, then ran one hand through his hair. "Not yet. We need to talk. That was why you arranged the meeting, after all. He could always say no."  
  
The bleeding had stopped. Kenren dropped the last wad of tissue paper into the bin. "And if he does?"  
  
"Well." Tenpou shrugged. "For a start, Konzen finds a way to have Gokuu sent down to Earth at once. Kanzeon Bosatsu can probably arrange something if Konzen can bring himself to ask hir."  
  
"I'm not following," Kenren said, because he was afraid that he was. He remembered lifting Gokuu's chains and testing their weight, and his surprise at what that meant about Gokuu's strength.. _A child, another child, Nataku too, they're all children._  
  
"You are following and you do understand," Tenpou answered, clear-eyed and cold.  
  
"I'm surprised that you can even fucking think it!"  
  
"I think it because other people will. Not just Litouten. I've already had a few casual approaches from some other people who dislike him, who were just casually wondering if the reason for my acquaintance with that _itan_ was, you know, not that we want to pre-empt you or anything, and really we quite appreciate that it might be the most convenient solution . . ." Tenpou broke off sharply. "We're running out of time and possibility."  
  
"Then find another answer." Kenren hauled himself out of the chair, stalked across to Tenpou where he leant against the desk. "I did what you wanted, I tested the kid, fine, he's got muscle, he's got more power there than he knows or than he's ever bothered to use, but he's still a _kid_. He's still hurting over that girl. I don't even know who the hell she was, though you clearly do."  
  
Tenpou looked up at him, tilting his head slightly. "If you're worried about what we're getting Homura into, consider what his life is going to be otherwise. He's _itan_, he's an outsider; the Emperor barely acknowledges his existence, he's spent most of his life kept out of the public view, and he's likely to be hidden away again the moment anything else happens. If Li actually considered him a threat, he'd already be dead. We're giving him a chance."  
  
"Not much of one."  
  
"No." Tenpou took his glasses off again, folded them, and put them beside him on the desk. His eyes still had that dark focus to them. "You've still got blood on your face."  
  
"Fuck that. Are you serious about all this?"  
  
"I have considered the alternatives. They . . . aren't preferable." Tenpou folded a corner of his lab coat, spat on it, and swabbed it against Kenren's cheek. The cloth was harsh, rougher than the usual silks of Heaven, and Tenpou's hand was warm through it.  
  
Kenren brought his own hand up, to catch Tenpou by the wrist. "You aren't planning anything dangerous, Marshal? None of that shit about trying to keep the rest of us safe while you go out there on your own?"  
  
"It won't be me out there on my own," Tenpou said, equably. "It'll be Homura."  
  
"Anh. Just wanted to make sure that you realised that."  
  
"I've realised that for a while."  
  
"Like tonight?"  
  
"I'm used to trusting you, General."  
  
"Glad to hear it, Marshal." He kept hold of Tenpou's wrist, feeling the other's pulse.  
  
"I have no plans to stop doing so."  
  
"Yeah. Can't think why you would."  
  
Tenpou sighed. "I didn't tell you because you wouldn't have been as hard on him if you knew."  
  
"Not like you, then?"  
  
"No." Tenpou touched his face again. "Not like me."  
  
---

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	3. Rumours

Rumours   
  
The moon hung in the sky like a giant white petal, and Homura waited in the arbour among the cherry trees. More blossom had fallen as he sat there, and lay crusted on the sleeves of his cape in uncrushed drifts, bleached of all colour. He had arrived at the first hour after midnight, thinking it more interesting to watch any potential ambushers get into position than to be their victim, and it was almost a pity that nobody had yet turned up brandishing swords and muttering conspiratorially to each other.  
  
And besides -- what else did he have to do with his time, anyhow?  
  
A pale figure turned the corner at the far end of the arched trees which led in rows to the arbour, and began pacing slowly towards him. A brief gust of wind flapped the skirts of a white labcoat, bleached of stains and smears in the moonlight, and the loop of a dark necktie showed against the collar of his shirt like a noose. He paused, halfway down the lane of trees, to light a cigarette.  
  
Homura waited patiently.  
  
The man jerked into motion again, strolling along under the cherry trees as though he was going to meet a lover. Homura recognised him now -- Marshal Tenpou, unsullied in matters of war, but with a reputation that had a slightly questionable flavour in certain quarters. A popular target for disapproval, though also reputed to be one of the most dangerous men in Heaven.  
  
Of course Litouten's little jibe had gone the rounds. _They say you act as General Kenren's wife . . ._ And of course it had come to mind when he wanted to insult the General.  
  
It had certainly worked, he could say that much for it.  
  
Homura chose to wait as the Marshal approached, leaning back against the carved stone of the bench, and kept his face still. Either the Marshal was the person who arranged the rendezvous, in which case he wanted to negotiate from a position of equality, or this was pure coincidence -- and in that case hopefully the Marshal would leave him alone and go wherever he was going.  
  
Marshal Tenpou came to a halt a few yards away, and leaned against one of the cherry trees. A few petals drifted down, tilting this way and that on the faint breeze. The Marshal watched them till they touched the ground. Moonlight made blank panes of his glasses as he tilted his head.  
  
Homura waited.   
  
"Do you smoke?" the Marshal asked.  
  
"No," he answered, monosyllabic.  
  
"Do you mind if I smoke?"  
  
"Would it make a difference?"  
  
"Yes," the Marshal said, and smiled. "Yes, actually, it would."  
  
That wasn't part of the conversation which he'd outlined in his head. "Oh," he said blankly. "Well, thank you, but it doesn't matter."  
  
"Anh." The Marshal drew on his cigarette. It glowed an earthly red against the backdrop of blacks and whites. "You're probably wondering why I asked you to meet me here."  
  
"I am curious." Homura threw out the statement like a lure, waiting to see what it would draw, and tried to repress the feeling of being very far out of his depth. He couldn't read the other man's eyes, posture, anything. His chains whispered together as he shifted his hands.  
  
"No guesses? No, seriously. I -- would find it interesting to know a little about how you think, and what you think."  
  
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Why? What do you want?"  
  
"That's a dangerous question to ask someone when you have no idea what they might answer. They might say anything at all."  
  
"Yes, well. It's not as if I know you."  
  
"There are always rumours." The Marshal let his tone dip slightly on the last word, stressing it.  
  
"Plenty of rumours," Homura agreed amiably, and tasted bile, and wished that he was standing rather than sitting down.  
  
"I'm glad that you're aware of rumours." Marshal Tenpou smiled; a sudden, friendly, open smile.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because a man who isn't aware of what's going on around him is a man in a very dangerous position. Especially at the moment. Would you agree?"  
  
They were alone in an ocean of silence, in a fishbowl of pale cherry blossom and darker grass and darkest sky. "Am I in a dangerous position?"  
  
"Probably." The Marshal shrugged. "I'm sure you've noticed."  
  
"Are you threatening me?"  
  
"Do you want me to?"  
  
Homura took a deep breath, but he didn't move his eyes from the other man, any more than he would have from a coiled snake. "What do you want?"  
  
"Seriously?" The Marshal dropped the butt of his cigarette, and ground it out with one toilet-slippered foot. "I'm proposing an alliance."  
  
_Is that what he calls it._ Homura had been courted, to soften the word, in various ways since leaving his cell. Some thought that he actually had influence with the Emperor, appearances aside, and others found him or his lineage attractive in some way, perverse as either might be. So far he had been able to avoid those who felt that his compliance -- his proper obedience -- would be automatic. Even if this was a more courteous approach than earlier ones had been, and certainly more camouflaged . . .  
  
"No, not like that," Marshal Tenpou broke in on his thoughts. His voice was edged in the way that a razor holds an edge, cutting deep and drawing blood a second before the pain comes. "You're too young for me." A beat. "And you're not very good at hiding your thoughts. That's why."  
  
With what seemed to be one of the greatest efforts of self-control in his life, Homura returned the other man's cold-eyed gaze. "Be more specific, then, Marshal. Rumour has its limits."  
  
The Marshal gave a fraction of a nod. "I shall be blunt. Heaven needs a toushin taishi."  
  
"Heaven _has_ a toushin taishi," Homura pointed out. Everyone knew about Nataku, and certainly everyone knew about Nataku's father. "Unless the current one has some health problem . . ."  
  
"Unfortunately not." The Marshal lit another cigarette, his raised hand shielding his mouth for a moment. "Heaven needs _another_ toushin taishi. If you are willing to cooperate, then you could be in a position to use your . . . heritage, rather than have it use you."  
  
Homura raised his brows. "You mean the fact that I'm _itan_? Call a spade a spade, Marshal."  
  
"If you wish." A shrug. "It is a word. At certain times, it has been interpreted . . . with different degrees of precision. At the moment, it sets you outside society. However, the toushin taishi is outside society in any case. But what the toushin taishi has, that you do not have, Homura, is power."  
  
The word hung in the air between them.  
  
Homura had thought of freedom many times. He'd hoped for acceptance. He'd dreamed of love. He'd never before realised quite how powerful a temptation power could be, because he'd never considered it as a possibility. But . . . "Nataku is toushin taishi," he said, working to keep his voice calm, "and nobody could say that Nataku has any sort of control over his life."  
  
"Ah." Marshal Tenpou smiled. "But I don't want a tool. I want an ally."  
  
Homura frowned, then smiled, a bright unchancy smile, as understanding began to slowly shape itself in his mind. "You want a second toushin to destroy Litouten's power base as father and master of the current toushin. You want an _itan_ for that." He raised his hands, and let the links of chain swing. "You want a lot of things, Marshal, for very little return."  
  
The Marshal nodded, face mild. "Quite so. You will be a target for Litouten, and possibly for others. You might well die in the line of duty. It's been known."  
  
"And what do I get for this?"  
  
"Why don't you tell me?"  
  
_Power._ "The chance to have a choice, for once," Homura said slowly. _Power._ "Allies. You, and others. Because you wouldn't try this on your own." _Power._ "A position which, if nothing else, would keep me occupied." _Power._  
  
"All of these," Marshal Tenpou said, "and something else, as proof of my sincerity."  
  
Homura tilted a hand, waiting to see what sort of bribe the other thought could buy him.  
  
"I have contacts in the bureaucracy." The Marshal's eyes were suddenly deadly flat, deadly level. "She has only just been sentenced to earth; she will not have been born yet, will only just have been conceived. But we can find your Rinrei."  
  
Something in Homura's throat knotted. He shut his eyes, opened them again, looked at the other man. "How do you know her _name_?"  
  
"Some people listen to rumours. Some people try to find out the truth behind them. A man's private life is his own business. It's a pity that -- what happened to the two of you happened."  
  
"Some people still have what they have," he spat, angry enough to be careless.  
  
"Heaven isn't fair," the Marshal said. "Get used to it. Or learn to use it."  
  
"Are those the only choices we have?"  
  
Marshal Tenpou removed the cigarette from his mouth, and exhaled a long breath of smoke. "Sad, isn't it? And this is Heaven. You almost wonder if Under Heaven would be better."  
  
"So . . ." He considered. "May I ask a question?"  
  
"Please do."  
  
"What do you actually want out of this?"  
  
The other man focused on the end of his cigarette. "I want . . . a lot of things, Homura. I don't expect to get all of them. What I _need_, for the moment, is you willing to be toushin taishi."  
  
"That you can have."  
  
"Good. Come along, then; we have a lot to do, and little time to do it in."  
  
"Even in Heaven?"  
  
"Especially in Heaven."  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	4. Rumours II

# Rumours

  
  
The air tonight held all the stillness and stagnation of Heaven at its best, Tenpou decided. Cherry blossoms scented the air in long endless ribbons of sweet perfume, like the incense inside mortal temples.  
  
He remembered his words to Konzen from a few nights ago, precise as a fever dream. _In fact, there are precedents in history for having several toushins at once. Probably because they give the position to whoever's qualified for it._  
  
Poor child.  
  
It had come to him then, as a matter of denial rather than decision.  
  
_But Litouten's using Nataku's power to pull himself up in the world, and of course   
if Gokuu became toushin as well as Nataku--_  
  
Not Gokuu. And therefore, someone else. And he had walked back with Kenren afterwards, and helped Kenren to his bed, and promised to join him shortly, and then gone to his own desk and found the files on Homura.  
  
Was this personal dislike of himself something which went with an accurate view of the situation? That look in Kenren's eyes had been -- unpleasant. Not anger that Tenpou could do such a thing, but shock that he could conceive it.  
  
_I don't like myself very much either some days, Kenren. But that will not stop me and it will not stop the universe and it will not stop Litouten._  
  
Litouten. Yes. The man was a cancer in Heaven, and even if certain methods of removing him were unquestionably impossible (how your mind does play with the subject of killing, Tenpou Gensui, how it turns it over and over like a sweetmeat before tasting it, how curious, how fascinating) he must be dealt with somehow. Being vowed to the defense of Heaven ought to mean something.  
  
The boy -- no, Homura, he had to think of him as a grown man -- sat in the arbour amid drifts of pale blossoms, his cape spread around him in graduations of darkness. He was waiting patiently. The fact that he had turned up early showed a reassuring grasp of political realities.  
  
Tenpou finished lighting his cigarette, and began to walk down the avenue of cherry trees towards Homura. Of course, there was always the temptation to sneak around, emerge from behind him, and start the conversation with a degree of superiority, but that would be counter-productive in the long run. _Perhaps my sense of humour is a little strange? Perhaps._  
  
Homura leaned back against his stone bench, crossing his feet casually at the ankles. _I am receiving callers_, the posture said. _You may now present yourself._  
  
Better and better.  
  
He came to a halt a few yards away, and chose a cherry tree to lean against. The motion disturbed a few new petals, and he paused to watch them drift down, distracted by the slow fluidity of their motion. _Are we no more than this to the Bodhisattvas? Petals in the wind, falling from the heights?_ He considered putting the question to Kanzeon Bosatsu, but then again he might not like the answer.  
  
Homura was still waiting, politely or cautiously silent.  
  
"Do you smoke?" he asked.  
  
"No." The word came out with a flat abruptness. _Nervous, are we?_  
  
"Do you mind if I smoke?" he continued smoothly.  
  
Homura glanced at him from under his eyebrows, mismatched eyes clear and bright in the moonlight. "Would it make a difference?" he asked, voice bitter.  
  
"Yes," Tenpou said, and let himself smile. "Yes, actually it would."  
  
"Oh," Homura said blankly. _Off balance. Yes, that's right._ He made a quick recovery. "Well, thank you, but it doesn't matter."  
  
There was something of Konzen in him, Tenpou decided, just a little. That unwillingness to permit contact, based on a deeper surety that he would lose it. _Don't touch me. Don't touch me._ That face ruled to calmness, body coiled to stillness, but uncertainty ruling the whole.  
  
_I could do something with this boy_, Tenpou thought, and abruptly regretted the empathy that made him see Homura as a boy who needed help. _It makes no difference, no difference at all. It changes nothing._ "Anh." He drew on his cigarette again, letting the rush of nicotine distract him for a moment. "You're probably wondering why I asked you to meet me here."  
  
"I am curious," Homura replied coolly. His chains shivered against each other as he twitched his hands, betraying the nervousness which didn't show in his voice.  
  
Time to push him a little further. He had to be sure that Homura could handle himself under stress as well as in a fight. He had to know. He would not send the boy out alone to get killed. Kenren had been painfully accurate about that. "No guesses?" he asked casually. "No, seriously. I -- would find it interesting to know a little about how you think, and what you think."  
  
Homura leaned forward in a gesture that looked like old habit, resting his elbows on his knees. "Why?" he queried, eyes wary. "What do _you_ want?"  
  
Tenpou felt his mouth curve in the beginnings of a smile. He could taste the beginnings of danger, the start of a challenge. "That's a dangerous question to ask someone," he replied. "When you have no idea what they might answer, they might say anything at all."  
  
"Yes, well," Homura temporised. "It's not as if I know you."  
  
"There are always rumours." Tenpou let himself taste the last word slightly as he intoned it. Homura had already proved that he knew about _those_ rumours, which spoke well for his ability to pick up casual gossip. In Heaven as matters stood, that was a necessary survival skill. As to the topic of the rumours -- well, time to see how far Homura was prepared to give offense.  
  
"Plenty of rumours," Homura agreed cheerfully. He smiled. There was nothing humorous about it; it was a danger signal, a movement of the lips that said something about hunger and possibility and threat.  
  
_Now there's potential_. "I'm glad that you're aware of rumours," Tenpou said, and smiled in response.   
  
"Why?" Homura asked casually. His hands shifted in his lap again.  
  
Tenpou kept his smile, but there was nothing light about his voice. "Because a man who isn't aware of what's going on around him is a man in a very dangerous position. Especially at the moment. Would you agree?" _Konzen, Konzen, are you aware how much your position as the Bodhisattva's nephew keeps you safe? And even that won't serve for very much longer, not now that Litouten's noticed Goku, not now that you yourself have decided to involve yourself with the world around you._  
  
The breeze had stilled now, and the two of them were alone among the cherry trees. Homura lifted those bright sharp eyes. The moonlight lay on his face like a caress. "Am I in a dangerous position?"  
  
"Probably." He shrugged, deliberately casual, deliberately predatory. "I'm sure you've noticed."  
  
"Are you threatening me?"  
  
"Do you want me to?"   
  
Homura took a deep breath, but he didn't move his gaze from Tenpou, attention held, eyes dilated. "What do you want?"  
  
"Seriously?" Tenpou let the cigarette fall from between his fingers, and ground it out precisely with one toe. "I'm proposing an alliance."  
  
The words hung in the air between them. Then Homura's eyes narrowed, in a combination of shock and comprehension, and Tenpou realised that the boy was about to make an obvious mistake. "No, not like that," he said quickly, sharply, looking for the words to convince him that nothing of that sort was intended.   
  
_A pity_, the physical part of his mind commented, that part of his mind which had pursued liaisons before, that knew the dynamics and urges of the body very well indeed. _He's all edges and nerves. He'd have to feel that he was in control, of course -- probably too much of it being the other way around -- but it would be pleasant to watch him smile without that edge to it, to see him relax . . ._ "You're too young for me," he said easily, lying as blandly as ever, choosing the most logical explanation. He watched Homura's brows furrow, the _how does he know what I'm thinking_, and cut in a beat later. "And you're not very good at hiding your thoughts. That's why."  
  
The younger man frowned, mouth tight with tension, and glared up at him. "Be more specific, then, _Marshal_," he spat. "Rumour has its limits."  
  
Tenpou gave him a shadow of a nod for that bit of control. "I shall be blunt," he said smoothly. "Heaven needs a toushin taishi."  
  
"Heaven _has_ a toushin taishi," Homura commented dryly. "Unless the current one has some health problem?" But the spark was there in his eyes, the beginning of comprehension.  
  
"Unfortunately not." Tenpou took a moment to light another cigarette, letting the pause in the conversation draw itself out. _Not too fast now, not too fast, let him build up his own anticipation, start to think about it himself . . ._ "Heaven -- needs another toushin taishi. If you are willing to cooperate," _and if you are willing to be used, be my tool, my pawn, let me put you in danger, why am I doing this, why am I sending out a soldier where I cannot go myself, why use this child, Kenren, you were right, and I am cruel_, "then you could be in a position to use your heritage. Rather than have it use you."  
  
Homura raised his brows. "You mean the fact that I'm _itan_? Call a spade a spade, Marshal."  
  
"If you wish." He shrugged. "It is -- a word. At certain times it has been interpreted . . ." He hesitated. "With different degrees of precision." After all, some families could manage to hide their halfbreed children better than others, and some could even smuggle them into society, while others disposed of them and prayed -- how odd, to pray in Heaven -- that the matter would remain a secret. Some families birthed _itans_ from a perfectly respectable heritage, and suffered from it. People who knew about it didn't talk about it. It wasn't done. It wasn't spoken of. It didn't happen. "At the moment," he continued, "it sets you outside society. However, the toushin taishi is outside society in any case. But what the toushin taishi has, that you do not have, Homura," was there just a flinch there as he used the boy's name? "is power."  
  
Oh, he had him now. How the boy's eyes burned at the thought, how every line of his body drew sharp and fierce and tense, black ink against the pale paper of cherry petal background. Tenpou inhaled cigarette thought and tried to ignore the tightening of his own body. _Later. Kenren, later._   
  
"Nataku is toushin taishi," Homura finally said, after a pause that was more definite than any words could have been. He swallowed. "And nobody could say that Nataku has any sort of control over his life."  
  
"Ah." Tenpou smiled, and looked out at the world around him clear-eyed, and thought about his own death, and the destruction of Heaven. "But I don't want a tool. I want an ally."  
  
Homura frowned, then smiled, a bright unchancy smile, a foreshadowing of some adult force of vengeance that made Tenpou's brows draw together in unformed fear. "You want a second toushin to destroy Litouten's base as father and master of the current toushin," he said slowly. "You want an _itan_ for that." He raised his hands, letting the chain swing between them in a mimicry of an oath of fealty. "You want a lot of things, Marshal, for very little return."  
  
He nodded, resigned. "Quite so. You will be a target for Litouten, and possibly for others." _Certainly for others. But at least you seem to realise that, not like the soldier who ran out there with those trusting harmless eyes and died saying But Mars- _ "You might well die in the line of duty." _Like him._ "It's been known." _It's almost certain._  
  
"And what do I get for this?"  
  
_Fill in the gaps yourself. Let me know what you want._ "Why don't you tell me?"  
  
"The chance to have a choice, for once," Homura said slowly. "Allies. You, and others. Because you wouldn't try this on your own." _Quite accurate, even if Konzen has yet to be informed of his major part in this._ "A position which, if nothing else, would keep me occupied."  
  
"All of these," Tenpou said. "And something else, as proof of my sincerity." And to make sure that Homura wouldn't betray him -- oh, he'd taken the bait, that was clear enough, but now it was time to twist the barbs and make sure they'd stay in.  
  
_You're cruel, Tenpou Gensui_, he thought, and then answered himself with, _I do not delude myself, I have never deluded myself, and I will pay when it comes due._  
  
Homura tilted a hand, waiting.  
  
"I have contacts in the bureaucracy." He watched himself dangling exactly what Homura wanted in front of him. He watched the boy's face freezing as he spoke, caught between desperate hope and disbelief. "She has only just been sentenced to earth; she will not have been born yet, will only just have been conceived. But we can find your Rinrei."  
  
Homura closed his eyes, opened them again, and something in that mismatched gaze said, _Betray me in this and you are dead._ "How do you know her name?"  
  
"Some people listen to rumours. Some people try to find out the truth behind them." Why tell Homura quite how scandalous a little affair it had been? No wonder the Emperor had wanted it all brushed under the carpet as quickly as possible. "A man's private life is his own business," he said, and wished that it was. "It's a pity that -- what happened to the two of you happened."  
  
"Some people still have what they have," Homura spat. It was quite obvious what he was thinking about.  
  
Tenpou shrugged. _Let him get it out of his system now. I need him thinking later._ "Heaven isn't fair. Get used to it. Or learn to use it."  
  
"Are those the only choices we have?"  
  
No wonder children were so rare in Heaven; it was heartbreaking to have to explain reality to them. You wanted to believe that something better was possible. You lied to Goku about what was going on around him, or brushed over the details, anything, just to let him stay happy and innocent. You kept the truth away from Konzen, and let him stay in cold isolation, so that he wouldn't feel impelled to meddle with the world around him and soil his hands, because if he knew then he would feel that he had to try to do something, because he was a kinder person than you were. You hid half your soul from Kenren, the part that was fascinated with the darker things, so that he would look at you and smile and kiss you and hold you and walk through the fire for you, to you. And now he was going to coopt Konzen into his conspiracy, and make Kenren collude in using this boy, and he wouldn't hesitate.   
  
Tenpou took the cigarette from his mouth, and breathed smoke into the blossom-scented air. "Sad, isn't it? And this is Heaven. You almost wonder," _you almost believe,_ "if Under Heaven would be better."  
  
"So . . ." Homura paused, considering. "May I ask a question?"  
  
"Please do."  
  
"What do you actually want out of this?"  
  
_What keen vision. How very painful._ "I want . . . a lot of things, Homura. I don't expect to get all of them." Let that be enough to satisfy him. "What I need, for the moment, is you willing to be toushin taishi."  
  
"That you can have." The words came easily, as though they didn't involve any sort of risk.  
  
"Good." Tenpou exhaled. "Come along, then; we have a lot to do, and little time to do it in."  
  
"Even in Heaven?" Homura asked dryly.  
  
"Especially in Heaven."  
  
_And this is where you lead him into danger. Aren't you going to do something else, Tenpou Gensui? There's always a choice, you know. You could find another way. You could risk someone else. You could do something else._  
  
And this was night in Heaven, among the cherry trees, with an _itan_ who didn't understand the bargain that he'd just made. All the stillness and stagnation that one could ever ask for, all the good order of Heaven distilled down to a promise of _learn the rules and lose any innocence you had left_.  
  
Tenpou Gensui lit another cigarette, and breathed in smoke. They said that it was poison, Under Heaven.  
  
A pity that he liked living far too well to want to die.  
  
---

[Fanfic Page][1]

   [1]: http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~maya/fanfic/fanfic.html



	5. Drafting

Drafting   
  
Tenpou carried in the tray of tea implements, and then stood there, looking blankly at Konzen's empty, pristine desk. "Where do I put it down?" he asked.  
  
Konzen looked up at him and blinked. "I wasn't expecting you today. I'm busy." He paused, then remembered to add, "Sorry. Goku's outside. And why have you brought the tea in, anyhow?"  
  
"It gave me an excuse to lock the door behind me," Tenpou said amiably. "We need to talk."  
  
"Ah." It was annoying to have acquaintances bringing problems to him. Like those tiny dogs which the ladies of the court favoured, perhaps, tugging along unearthed bones twice their size and stinking with mud and corruption. Konzen brushed invisible dirt from his white silk gown, and gloomily wondered what was going to come next. Catastrophe seemed unlikely, as that would probably have involved Tenpou bursting through the door, sword in hand, and dragging him along, rather than stopping for tea. "Put it down. Have a seat. What do we need to talk about?"  
  
Tenpou set the tray down in a ripple of tiny clinks, as the cups chimed against each other, then balanced a hip on the corner of the desk. He didn't try to light a cigarette. That in itself made Konzen uneasy. "You remember," he began, vaguely, "that you were actually becoming interested in current affairs in Heaven?"  
  
"I was asking you what was happening. Yes." Konzen poured the tea precisely, taking care not to spill a drop.  
  
"One might even have thought," Tenpou continued, eyes on Konzen's hands rather than on Konzen's face, "that you were concerned by some aspects of current events."  
  
Konzen pushed one of the teacups across to him. "You're not usually this circumlocutory."  
  
"Anh. We've known each other a while, haven't we?" Tenpou picked up his cup, and folded his hands around it thoughtfully. His gaze moved to Konzen's face, and Konzen found himself looking down in response, uncomfortable with something in the quality of the other man's eyes.  
  
"Yes," he finally answered, when it became obvious that Tenpou wasn't going to continue otherwise. "So? What is it that you want to say to me with the door locked?" He suddenly understood, and it was surprisingly painful. "You've worked out a way to get the monkey back Down Below, is that it?" How strange that the words should be so hard to speak. He had always prided himself in uncompromising accuracy, even when he'd withdrawn himself from a Heaven that was too sordid for his discriminating tastes. Even if he was prepared to admit to caring about the stupid monkey's welfare, he hadn't expected it to be this difficult to . . .   
  
. . . to let go . . .   
  
"No," Tenpou said, and Konzen nearly spilled his tea in relief. "Not yet. Though if you feel it's urgent?"  
  
"It can wait. What is it, then? Kenren in trouble again?" That would be a reassuring touch of normality.  
  
"Not that either." Tenpou smiled at him. "I need your help, Konzen."  
  
Konzen twitched, and crossed his legs defensively. "You're asking for my help," he said disbelievingly. "You _never_ ask for my help."  
  
"Well, no, but . . ."  
  
"You go and get yourself beaten half to death and then you try to convince me that you were just playing at pro wrestling," he continued, an unspecified annoyance building inside him. "You . . ."  
  
"Konzen," Tenpou broke in, eyes dark and serious, "I need your help."  
  
"What with?" he temporised, trying to ignore the worry that was hiding behind the anger. _And what if I fail?_  
  
"Anh. Some people wouldn't have asked that."  
  
"No, they wouldn't, would they?" he snapped in response, and neatened a single piece of paper to calm his hands.  
  
"I need you," Tenpou said deliberately, "to present a memorandum for me, supporting the election of the _itan_ Homura of the Emperor's household as a second Toushin Taishi." He paused, then slid off the desk and came round behind Konzen to pat him helpfully on the back. "Careful, you'll choke on that tea."  
  
Konzen spat out scalding liquid, put down the cup carefully so as not to break it, and swivelled round in his chair to glare up at Tenpou. "Are you out of your mind, Marshal?"  
  
"Never more so," Tenpou replied gravely. "Or should that be never less so? You know, Down Below they say that genius is always regarded as close to insanity by the onlookers. It's in that scroll of commentaries by . . ."  
  
Konzen grabbed for Tenpou's sleeve before the Marshal could wander off looking for his annotations. "Never mind that. You'd need significant military and political backing to be able even to consider presenting a second toushin --"  
  
Tenpou smiled. "I'm the Marshal of the Western Armies and you're the nephew of Kanzeon Bosatsu."  
  
"-- and there's no reason for this Homura to agree --"  
  
"He already has. I left him in my quarters to keep him out of the way."  
  
"What's he supposed to do in your quarters?"  
  
Tenpou shrugged. "Read a good book or two?"  
  
Konzen tried to get back to the thread of the argument, or rather, the nub of the objection, if he could remember exactly what it was. "And why would they need a second toushin anyhow, with Nataku in the position?"  
  
"Anh." Tenpou's smile broadened into something dangerous. "Litouten's done too good a job of convincing Heaven that the youkai are plotting revolt. As far as half the court's concerned, Down There is full of violent rampaging youkai. A second toushin taishi can only be seen as a good thing."  
  
"It wouldn't work," Konzen protested.  
  
"It had better work," Tenpou said quietly. "You're intelligent, Konzen Douji. Think about it."  
  
Konzen's gaze dropped to his hands. He could feel the other man standing behind him, and the space between his shoulders itched. He hunched defensively, and tried to remember if he'd heard of this Homura before. "I didn't know that the Emperor's household had any _itan_ in it."  
  
"They'd hardly advertise it, would they?" Tenpou moved round to where Konzen could see him -- or rather, couldn't avoid his gaze -- and leaned on his desk. "There is a possibility that this may be dangerous for you. I'm sorry about that. But --"  
  
"But it's not as if I wasn't being watched anyway, is it?" Konzen broke in sharply. _He talks as though I've already accepted. I haven't accepted yet._ "What about Goku?"  
  
Tenpou adjusted his glasses slightly. "Anh. Well, that's one of the good points about this plan. It should mean that nobody will be considering him for that position. One is good, two is reasonable, three is probably an embarrassment of riches. As long as he takes care not to get into the public eye too much . . ."  
  
Konzen nodded. "And do you seriously think that this will have any effect on Litouten's position?"  
  
"I shall be very disappointed if it doesn't," Tenpou said blandly. His eyes were very dark.  
  
It was the air of directed attention that always held Konzen, and that made something in him tense, even if the attention wasn't at himself. Tenpou Gensui's moments of focus were uncommon -- or, perhaps, reserved for other matters. Perhaps Kenren Taishou saw more of them, with the army business that they both handled. But Tenpou's intensity was a rare thing in Heaven. It always made him look at the other man a second time, and then look away. It was an uneasy thing.   
  
"Something will happen," Tenpou added. "I'm certain of it."  
  
Yes, that was the frightening thing about the intensity. It might make something happen, something here in Heaven where nothing ever changed. And to be the subject of it . . .  
  
Tenpou was right. He had to think about this. He lowered his gaze to the papers in front of him for a moment, considering. The corner of Tenpou's labcoat (odd, these days it actually got washed and was clean rather than being its previous grubby, dust-stained self) lay across a pile of carefully ordered documents, another intrusion into his carefully ordered life. Another intrusion -- like the intrusion that Goku had been.  
  
_Can you be the sun for that child?_  
  
Not that. Not just that. Could he keep the child safe? Could he do _anything_ to affect the world around him?  
  
Apparently he could.  
  
"You'd better introduce me to this Homura," Konzen said flatly, looking up again to meet Tenpou's eyes. "It wouldn't do for me to not know what my candidate for Toushin looks like."  
  
---  
  
Konzen followed Tenpou into the Marshal's office, nostrils flaring -- as always -- at the stink of cigarettes. The place still showed signs of its last reorganisation; books were lined up neatly on the shelves, scrolls were stacked in order, and the floor was visible. A young man was sitting in Tenpou's chair, coat thrown over his shoulders, a book in his lap. He looked up sharply as the two of them entered, and Konzen felt his stomach twitch as he suddenly saw the youth's unnatural eyes; one dark purple, one bright gold, as clear and strange as Goku's own eyes.  
  
Abruptly he was very glad that Goku was playing in the endless Heavenly fields of flowers, well out of this, well away from here.  
  
Tenpou shut the door behind them. "Homura," he nodded to the young man. "Find anything interesting to read?"  
  
Homura lifted the book, and light glinted on something dark that circled his wrists. "Only about Down There. You have exotic tastes, Marshal."  
  
"Anh." Tenpou lit a cigarette with the quick, jagged urgency of need, and inhaled deeply. "Well. Your line of work will probably be more involved with the youkai. I'll try to find you something a little more relevant."  
  
Homura's attention moved to Konzen. "And this is . . ." He made something almost insulting of the question, but there was a hesitancy beneath it, an uncertainty of position and place.  
  
"Konzen Douji," Tenpou answered before Konzen could. "Kanzeon Bosatsu's nephew. An ally of ours."  
  
Konzen folded his arms, leaned against the wall, and looked down his nose at Homura. Apparently being _itan_ didn't involve such niceties of courtesy as getting out of a chair when a guest entered the room. He half regretted not asking Tenpou for more details back in his own study. Such as how much the young man knew, and whether he was simply a strong arm and a broad pair of shoulders rather than a thinking brain in this -- call it a conspiracy, there was no other word for it -- and how it was that Tenpou was sure he could be trusted. Admittedly there was little if any place for an _itan_ in Heaven, and this Homura would probably be grateful for any position that he could get, and any sort of proper acceptance into society, but even so . . .  
  
Homura raised his brows. "We're trusting a nephew of Kanzeon Bosatsu?" he said incredulously. "Even I've heard about what se gets up to."  
  
For once, Konzen found he was actually impelled to defend his aunt. The urge mingled with shock at the challenge to his own integrity. "Se grows excellent lotuses," he stated flatly. "Well, se would if se actually had anything to do with taking care of them."  
  
Tenpou blinked at him, eyes wide and dark. "I don't think I've ever heard you say anything so poetic before."  
  
Konzen snorted. "That was strictly practical." Then he saw exactly what was on Homura's wrists, and looked away before he could be caught staring. Close metal shackles spanned his wrists, and a dark length of chain linked the cuffs, dangling loosely over his legs. It wasn't even as if he was properly dressed -- oh, but the Emperor's household probably had dispensations and leave for that sort of thing -- in his current set of clothing, a vulgarly tight upper garment which clung to his chest, and trousers of a similar cut, all of it looking like one of Tenpou's pictures of Down There. _Wonderful. He's not even going to try to look the part. How on earth does Tenpou think we're going to pass him off as a proper Toushin? A child could be excused for ignorance, but this isn't a child._  
  
"Ah. I suppose we need a bureaucrat to help support this." Homura smiled, a slow curve of the mouth. It wasn't a friendly smile at all; there was something unchancy about it, something dangerous. "Pleased to meet you, Konzen Douji."  
  
"The pleasure is all mine," Konzen answered remotely. "Yes. You do need someone with the authority to put this through. Tenpou, can I use your desk?"  
  
"Of course." Tenpou cleared a pile of scrolls off it onto the floor, sweeping them off in a clatter of tubes and paper. "Here and now?"  
  
Homura looked at the two of them, mouth still curved in that cat-smile.  
  
"Yes." Konzen slid his seal from a pocket in his robes, and looked around for a writing-brush that hadn't been chewed on. "I'm assuming that you don't want this delayed. If you've actually gone to the extent of hiding Homura in your rooms, Tenpou --"  
  
"My study," Tenpou noted.  
  
Konzen shrugged. "Whatever. In any case, we need to prepare the memorandum as soon as possible." _And before Goku can get involved in anything else, before anybody else has any ideas about what to do with the stupid monkey, before any of the things that Tenpou is afraid of can start happening._ He took the sheet of paper which Tenpou offered him, and started drafting the document.  
  
"By the way," Tenpou said, voice idle, "you can access the files about the future destinations of souls, Konzen, can't you?"  
  
He nodded vaguely, mind on the words. "Yes. Technically I have the rank, though my duties give me no reason to bother about it. Why?"  
  
Homura sat up sharply, casual posture dropping away like a discarded shadow. "Then you can --"  
  
Tenpou made a quick gesture, quieting him. _Good. I need to concentrate. Can't afford any errors in this._ "We'll see to it later," the Marshal said.  
  
"What's your full name?" Konzen queried in Homura's direction. "And any relevant titles?"  
  
"You don't know?" There was a loaded bitterness to Homura's voice. "I thought everyone knew who I was."  
  
Konzen looked up from the document, and blinked at Homura. "Should I?" Perhaps he'd done something famous that Konzen was supposed to know about.  
  
Homura made a very curious noise, then sagged back into Tenpou's chair as though tension and anger had drained out of him together. He raised one hand to cover his eyes. The chain dangling from his wrist cast a long line of shadow on the floor. "No reason. Why should you know or care?"  
  
Tenpou drew on his cigarette. "Things are going to change, Homura. Get used to it."  
  
_And where do they stop?_ Konzen wondered. _Do we get to say at some point, that's it, far enough, I don't want the change to go any further? Of course not._ His thoughts were full of a dry, weary disgust. It was all in his aunt's smile; that ceaseless, thoughtful smile that saw the world changing and was amused by it even as se pitied it, and saw him change, and wouldn't stop the world for him. _Not that I'd ask it of hir. Not that I'd ask anything of hir._  
  
Even to save Goku?  
  
He returned his attention to the document. Precision was all.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	6. Aspects of Vision

Angles of Vision   
  
This is what a child sees; adults as pairs of legs, topped by bodies, topped by heads, a different species, a different race, with their own priorities and incomprehensible thoughts.  
  
_"I still can't see Nataku? He's been 'not seeing people' forever. Is he really that sick?"  
  
"Yes -- sort of. In any case you can't see him now. I'm sorry you've had to come here every day --"_  
  
This is what a child sees; two of his friends talking together, and they sound worried, but he doesn't understand why.  
  
_"Of course he doesn't like me! I tried to choke him, why the fuck should he like me?"  
  
"Anh. You could explain that it was all part of a way to introduce yourself without getting noticed by Litouten?"  
  
"Tenpou, you were the one who said we were going to try to keep him out of Litouten's way for the moment."  
  
"Yes. And?"  
  
"Has it escaped your notice that your protege's getting big ideas and might just do something stupid?"  
  
"It's only been one day so far. I don't anticipate anything really drastic for at least a -- Oh! What are you doing there, Gokuu?"_  
  
This is what a child sees; the sun clouded.  
  
_He sits there with his head resting on his hands, elbows planted firmly on his desk, looking at the papers in front of him but not really seeing them, dark eyes distracted and vague.  
  
He's thinking about something. It must be something very important._  
  
This is what a child sees; the Bodhisattva smiling.  
  
_"Well now, Konzen. You have been busy."  
  
"More than you have."  
  
"And what about the child?"  
  
"Since when have you concerned yourself with him?"_  
  
This is what a child sees; two men talking, gowns and bound hair and girdles so like the rest of heaven. One man has his eyes closed. How can you see with your eyes closed?  
  
_"I don't believe it. Sir, it can't be --"  
  
"If the Emperor has ordered it so, then it is so, and we can hardly dispute it."  
  
"But . . . sir!"  
  
"You have your orders."  
  
"But sir, with the Toushin Taishi Nataku still wounded, then you might have to serve under this, this . . ."  
  
"It is not our place to dispute our orders. Be about your business."_  
  
This is what a child sees; a stranger with strange eyes. Does this mean he's one of a kind? Nataku told the child that to be unique is a wonderful thing.  
  
_"Who are you?"  
  
"Toushin Taishi. But you may call me Homura. What are you?"  
  
"Gokuu! Come away now. Stupid monkey."  
  
A pause.  
  
"Fetch me some more flowers, Gokuu. The ones on my desk are wilting."_  
  
This is what a child sees; passage in a storm of white silk cloak and silver hair, scarlet eyes like jewels, roiling with disturbance. It might be fury at another, or fury at self, or fury at another for having done something that he really wanted doing but couldn't say he wanted done. The child knows all about that.  
  
_"Fetch me Tenpou Gensui now."_  
  
This is what a child sees; a tall man in white, with long fingers that can pry, and sharp eyes like hidden needles, and a smile that twists at a private joke. And then he sidles away, because children know some strangers are dangerous.  
  
_"Yes, I know I wasn't expected. I rarely am."_  
  
This is what a child sees; Ten-chan preoccupied and Ken-nichan frowning and papers everywhere and Konzen wanting him to stay in his rooms and a stranger lounging and watching him and the Bodhisattva smiling and people walking to and fro, to and fro, to and fro.  
  
_"I've had word that -- no, it's not official word yet, it was passed to me through another source. As I was saying, I've had word that there's more trouble from the youkai. You're going to have to go Down There."_  
  
This is what a child sees; the servant still standing there at the door of the place where Nataku lives, still not letting him inside.  
  
_"I see... Well, if he's sick there's nothing I can do . . ."  
  
A pause.  
  
"Oh -- that reminds me. Here. Will you give this to Nataku? Ten-chan said you should bring flowers or melons when you go see someone who's sick."  
  
"Yes, certainly."  
  
"Ahh -- thanks! Oh, and by the way -- my name is 'Gokuu.' Remember to tell him that!"_  
  
This is what a child sees.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	7. Now We Are Sleeping

Now We Are Sleeping   
  
There is no time here; no day, no night, and however long you count the hours, the answer means nothing. There is no need for food, and therefore they have none. There is no need for sleep, but from time to time they close their eyes and there is a momentary blankness in the silence and the pale light. There is no quiet dusk, and no bright dawn.  
  
This is a place of safety for the King's womenfolk.   
  
It's very quiet here.  
  
---  
  
_slip slide image flickers running through the corridors towards the main hall, and why weren't you there in the first place, that woman with her inviting eyes and her story that she had to tell you, that she would tell only the Prince himself, and by the time you'd ripped out of her that she had nothing to tell and had only been sent to distract you, the armies were already outside and Nataku had entered  
  
this is the moment when you enter the hall and the child is fighting your father, YOUR FATHER, and the child is bleeding, covered with blood, long white robe stained with it, floor slick with it, and it is impossible that he could win, even if he is toushin taishi  
  
a toushin taishi? but that kami said  
  
time to die, child_  
  
---  
  
**this is where the darkness reaches out to infinity, and you reach one hand down to taste it, and it tastes of blood**  
  
---  
  
Rasetsunyo says, "Brush my hair." Gyokumen does so. She is Gyumaoh's concubine. Rasetsunyo is his wife.  
  
Rasetsunyo smiles at her. Gyokumen thinks nothing of it. Rasetsunyo has always smiled easily.  
  
Rasetsunyo walks through the endless days of greyness, and Rasetsunyo still smiles, and still speaks gently, and does not despair.   
  
Gyokumen rests her hands on her swollen belly, and hatred hones itself to a fine edge.  
  
---  
  
_and if you chained image to sensation, you have the sensation of hot fresh blood spattered across your face as you see the child moving, leaping to balance upon your father's sword, and it would be laughable if it were not what it is, which is death in action  
  
god of destruction, god of war, door god, what door do you hold open, toushin taishi  
  
what door do you usher my father through  
  
blood on your face, Red Child  
  
this cannot happen and yet it is happening and it is the stuff of nightmares  
  
he's my father  
  
wake up_  
  
---  
  
**it is peaceful here, far from where any voices call out to you, and only sometimes do you wonder why, or know anything other than the gentle darkness and the silence and the warm taste**  
  
---  
  
It has been . . . days, certainly. Months, possibly. Years? It is hard to be sure. There is no way to measure time. It is the mind rather than the body that needs to sleep. The marks on the wall become a pointless crosshatching of scratches.  
  
Gyokumen's nail was broken as they were ushered to safety in the kekkai. She had thought, at the time, that she would have the responsible servant beaten later. The nail is still broken. Nothing changes here.  
  
Gyokumen's child lies within her, and does not grow further. She sits with her hands across her womb, and dreams of her son. Her son. Her son who will displace Kougaiji, just as she herself will put down Rasetsunyo and the other woman's face will finally show hatred, show anger, show something that Gyokumen recognises . . .  
  
Rasetsunyo is still smiling, still polite, still gentle.  
  
Gyokumen dreams of murder.  
  
---  
  
_or was that how it happened?  
  
the memory shifts and drifts and slips away like everything else here, and the image of your father's eyes becomes your mother's face becomes the woman who lay beneath you two nights ago becomes Gyokumen's nails on silk becomes the kami who smiles and assures your father that certainly an attack on the humans will go unnoticed by heaven, will even please heaven  
  
becomes Souei's face as he leads the kami in, that shuttered face, that ready smile, those shadowed eyes  
  
becomes the child's strange eyes as he looks at you, for you are already moving forward, and he says  
  
he says, You too, Kougaiji  
  
those strange eyes_  
  
---  
  
**the slow rhythms of sleep**  
  
---  
  
Gyokumen's heels rap on the floor as she paces out the small dimensions of the kekkai. Two bedrooms. One general area. She is aware that her steps grow faster. She consciously slows her pace.  
  
She will not scream. Her mouth smiles. She will not scream.  
  
Where is her king? Where is her lover? Where is her world? Where is everything that isn't these few rooms, these short corridors? Where is the son who will save her? Where are the servants who will kneel before her?  
  
Rasetsunyo smiles and meditates. Rasetsunyo has finally suggested that perhaps they should find a way of leaving this place. Rasetsunyo speaks calmly, soothingly, as Gyokumen combs out the other woman's long hair. Rasetsunyo believes that they can combine their power and break free.  
  
Gyokumen hates Rasetsunyo for suggesting that Gyumaoh could have fallen.  
  
Gyokumen serves Rasetsunyo later, with mouth and hands, on her knees, and that lovely hair is all tangled again afterwards.  
  
Rasetsunyo smiles as Gyokumen combs out the other woman's hair.  
  
---  
  
_you remember moving as you leapt into action  
  
you remember moving as you held a lover  
  
you remember walking in the free air  
  
this is what blood smells like, this is what sex smells like, this is what air coming down from the mountains smells like with fresh snow behind it  
  
I will get me another son, your father says  
  
I will find some way to protect you from your desires, your mother says  
  
I can find some way for us to help each other, Gyokumen says  
  
I cannot make this offer openly, but I believe we understand each other, the kami says  
  
I bow to you, I swear my loyalty to Gyumaoh, I have brought this kami who wishes to speak to him, Souei says  
  
and they all want you  
  
and the only place to go now is somewhere that you aren't yourself_  
  
---  
  
**for a moment the darkness breaks, and you remember shock at the armies of Heaven outside your gates, you remember surprised amusement at the little toushin taishi, you remember fury at the kami who must have been lying to you all along, and you take your sword and go out to kill  
  
and then it's dark again  
  
and you sleep**  
  
---  
  
Rasetsunyo smiles at Gyokumen. Are you sure that you are well, little sister? she asks. There is concern in her voice, in her eyes. There is sympathy. There is affection.  
  
Of course, Gyokumen says. What could touch us here?  
  
Does something trouble you? Rasetsunyo asks. It's sincere. It's genuine. How does your child fare? she asks. Do not worry. It will not be much longer.  
  
Nothing, Gyokumen says. There is nothing to worry about. It will not be very much longer.  
  
Hate me, Gyokumen wishes. Hate me and be something that I can understand. I hate you. Your voice revolts me. Your kindness makes me dwindle. Your eyes are bright and full of light and I want to tear them out of your face.  
  
Hate me.  
  
But the other woman doesn't hate her.  
  
Very well. Gyokumen's hatred is enough for both of them.  
  
She combs out the other woman's hair. It falls from her hands like silk.  
  
---  
  
_somewhere that you are not yourself, where only fragmentary images pass through you like water through light, or light through water, and the faces are only faces, and the voices are only voices, and things that would have meant something to Kougaiji the son of Gyumaoh mean nothing to you because that is gone like a leaf on the surface of the stream  
  
whirling away  
  
and sometimes you even forget those strange eyes and the voice saying You too, and the coldness that seized you and thrust you down  
  
because there's nothing of you left to remember  
  
and perhaps some day you will wake  
  
or maybe you won't  
  
and you watch the dreams clear-eyed here where everything is still, at the heart of the storm, and you forget who Kougaiji is_  
  
---  
  
**darkness  
  
blood  
  
darkness**  
  
---  
  
Gyokumen knows what she will do now. The knowledge sustains her. It solaces her. It lets her smile at Rasetsunyo. It lets her touch her belly and dream of the child's birth. It lets day after day after day go by in silence like the leaves from a tree in autumn, whirling by in the wind. It tastes like good warm blood in her mouth.  
  
Rasetsunyo smiles back at her in innocence and warmth and affection.  
  
Gyokumen smiles.  
  
---  
  
_dreams_  
  
---  
  
**darkness**  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	8. Perception

Perception   
  
The room was opulent. Presumably Litouten's rank demanded such a thing. Shien perceived it, and decided, abstractly, that it was probably not worth the seeing. He had been kept waiting for over half an hour now; Litouten clearly had matters of high import to attend to, and at the same time Litouten had Nataku under close guard, and would not permit anybody to see him without a personal exemption. Thus Shien must wait here, hands folded, eyes closed, with nothing to do except ponder the bad taste of the decoration, the failings of Heaven, and the Toushin Taishi's current health, or lack of it, and the rumours of a new Toushin Taishi.  
  
Ah. A servant.  
  
"You may see the Toushin Taishi now," the servant informed him, eyes lowered nervously. "The Great Minister requests that the visit be kept short, as the Toushin Taishi is still recovering."  
  
Shien inclined his head in a polite nod, and let the servant lead him through the door and down a passage with the same opulent decoration. It was done to the prescribed forms, of course, and thus there could be no argument in Heaven against it.  
  
Another door. The servant opened it, and bowed himself backwards and away, letting Shien enter. Nataku was on the bed inside, a small figure in that great expanse of pale silk sheets and embroidered coverlet, head propped dead centre of his pillow, dark hair smoothly tied back -- as ever -- to leave the face naked. His eyes were closed, his breathing regular. A man in stained travelling robes was sitting on the side of the bed,turned away from Shien, his head tilted as he checked the child's pulse.  
  
The child . . . no, say rather Nataku, say Toushin Taishi. It was inappropriate to think of Nataku as a child. Only an adult could consciously choose to devote himself to the good of Heaven. A child was by definition someone too young for responsibility, too young to understand honour or proper behaviour, and too young to be asked to risk his life. Therefore, Nataku was an adult, and Nataku was toushin, and there was nothing further to be discussed in the matter.  
  
And, as such, as adult and as commander, Nataku was owed the respect and concern due a commander who had been injured in battle. The thoughts fell into line, as precise as a perfect line of motion, as exact as the blade of a sword. A child would have deserved protection, but Nataku was not a child. A commander deserved respect and consideration, and just as Heaven's ministers should be given proper obedience, so also a commander was owed the tokens of duty.  
  
"Mnh." The man put down Nataku's wrist, picked up a scroll that was on the bed next to him, and made a tiny annotation on it. "Oh." He half turned to regard Shien, then rose politely from where he was sitting, scroll and pen still in his hands. Glasses covered his eyes, their lenses opaque in the dim light. His short hair was disarrayed roughly around his head. "Terribly sorry, not expecting any visitors -- you're here to see . . .?"  
  
"The Toushin Taishi," Shien said briefly. "You are his physician?" Reassuring to see that Litouten was having Nataku attended, though the quality of this person -- then again, Tenpou Gensui himself was casual in dress but effective in action, and maybe this specimen was another of the same kind.  
  
"Anh, yes. Been with him since birth -- not that was so long ago, but then, he's a very early developer, wouldn't you say -- any questions?"  
  
Shien walked across to look down at Nataku, ignoring the doctor's babbling for a moment. One arm lay outside the covers, sleeve still disarranged from where the doctor had been taking the toushin's pulse. A thin line of tiny stitches held the long cut up the side of the arm closed. It could have been a model of metal and ivory, a display piece -- except, of course, that no artist in Heaven would ever create its like.  
  
"He will recover?"  
  
"Oh, of course." The doctor rolled up the scroll again and set it on the bedside table. "Of course, further wounds like that -- further use of that sort -- well, I really wouldn't like to say now. But you're the commander of that detachment of the army, mm? You'd know more than I . . ."  
  
Shien turned to regard the man. "I'd know what?"  
  
"Well, if any further activity of that sort was likely to be necessary. Such a good thing you're there to guard his back, mm?" The eyes behind the spectacles were momentarily visible, dark brown, intelligent, _aware_. Then the light shifted again to make the glasses opaque, and the eyes were hidden again as surely as Shien's own. "Youkai activity, most appalling, tch tch. Very noble of the Great Minister to put his own son forward as . . ." He trailed off. His mouth was smiling. "I'm sure we all wish that the rest of Heaven would be so self-sacrificing, mm?"  
  
The man seemed to be inviting some sort of complicity. It twitched at Shien's nerves, at his habitual fastidiousness. He found it unpleasant. "How long until the toushin recovers?" he asked formally, tone cool and dry.  
  
"Not long at all, Shien-sama." He shrugged. "All ready to go out there again. Of course, not quite the same -- but you know how it is with damage."  
  
Shien spared a moment to wonder how it was that the man knew his name, then set the thought aside as unprofitable. There were people whose business it was to know who was where and why they were there and what they did. No doubt Litouten had many in his service.   
  
He thought about scars. _You know how it is with damage._ Something like anger knotted in his stomach, and he forced it down and bound it as he always did, restrained it, made something else of it. He did not open his eyes.  
  
The doctor bent over, took the wrist between his fingers. Nataku's hand dangled limply, like a doll's. "Should be able to take quite a bit yet, of course. Resilient. Tough. A little killing pupp--" He broke off, as though he could feel Shien's gaze like a physical thing, even though Shien's eyes were still closed, even though Shien had made no sound. "Good thing that there's a new Toushin, isn't it, Shien-sama? Very convenient." His smile made something obscene of the word.   
  
"We each serve as we are directed and as is our duty," Shien said flatly. He watched the doctor's fingers on Nataku's wrist. The toushin's veins were blue against his white skin. "What are you doing?"  
  
"Taking pulses -- that is, a pulse, several pulses, do you know how hard it is to keep track of things up here? So much going on in one tiny little body." Again that smile, comprehending, suggesting an understanding which Shien denied. "Really it's for the best, give him a chance to be useful -- itan children, so awkward, though of course the family makes a difference, doesn't it?"  
  
"Your speculation is offensive." Anger wove itself again, was once again put down. It was offensive in itself that his commander should be so fragile, _as fragile as a child,_ so tiny a being, so -- defenseless. So much at the mercy of Litouten the Great Minister, _and one obeys authority,_ so much at the mercy of his orders, _the orders to stand back and be silent and let him fight alone,_ so very alone.  
  
"Anh. Well -- there's a new one now. Emperor's own family, and wouldn't we all be curious about that? No, no, of course you wouldn't." He laid Nataku's wrist back on the bed again. White flesh against silk almost as pale. "Wonder if I'll be called in for him as well. Good thing you're there to back him up, mm? Not as if we'll need a broken one, not with a new one to take his place."  
  
Shien turned, and walked to the door. Enduring this foolish babble was a deliberate temptation towards a lack of control. He let the words fall away like dust.  
  
"Anh. A very good thing." The doctor's back was turned to him, but Shien was suddenly sure that the other _perceived_ him, just as Shien himself perceived in response. "You'll be looking after Homura-sama, mm?"  
  
"He is not my responsibility," Shien answered, hand on the door. His words were light and cold, and should have cut off the conversation at its root.  
  
"Ah. Well -- responsibilities, mm? Poor little _itan_ children. Nobody's responsibility. Nobody ever really takes care of things. Mm?"  
  
Shien closed the door behind him, precise and neat as a movement in battle, and walked down the corridor in the silence and light of Heaven. He set the doctor's words behind him, things of no importance. Litouten's minions were apparently as -- no, the Great Minister should not be criticised, not overtly, not in word, not in deed, and thought itself must be stifled down and bridled away before it could give birth to any action.  
  
The order of Heaven was a bulwark against chaos and corruption. _He walked through Litouten's stifling mansion and the walls seethed with opulence and wealth and decay._ The order of his own mind was clarity and understanding and acceptance and control. _The child lies in the bed and the doctor holds his wrist and smiles._ It was his duty as a commander to command his soldiers well and to protect his superior officers. _Such a good thing you're there to guard his back, mm?_   
  
Orders were orders. Duty lay in obeying his orders. Virtue lay in adherence to duty.  
  
Shien walked through the streets of Heaven, and his eyes were closed against what lay around him.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	9. Kindling

Kindling   
  
They had given Homura a sword.  
  
Tenpou had been there, of course, along with the other marshals and high dignitaries, Kenren a warm certainty beside him as they stood there in full uniform. _Boots polished, pleats in order, everything that Heaven could ask for._ He had watched the careful procession of ceremonies, creeping from speech to speech to proclamation to appointment. Homura was at the centre of it all, anomalous among the robed men with their carefully arranged sleeves and combed hair.  
  
"Doing all right so far," Kenren muttered, not moving his lips. The sussurus of background whispers hid his voice.  
  
"Of course." Tenpou yearned for a cigarette.  
  
"You see Litouten?"  
  
"How could I miss him?"  
  
The Great Minister was there, of course. It would have been inappropriate for him not to attend an event of this importance -- not to mention, Tenpou thought in that part of his mind which was still trying to treat the whole affair like a chess game, a bad move. Snubbing Homura the _itan_ was one thing. Snubbing Homura the new toushin taishi was another thing. Snubbing the Emperor's nephew, however barely acknowledged he might be, and however much in disgrace, was yet another thing again. Add the three together, and one got Litouten standing there with his oiled ringlets carefully arranged and a smile pinned to his face. He was currently affecting a generous benevolence, eyes as dark and hidden as clogged weed-covered ponds.  
  
"Think he's going to try something?"  
  
"Of course." The two fell silent as the current speech reached its end, and joined in the general ripple of polite applause. Homura held his position, down on one knee, sword resting across his joined hands, the length of chain which joined his shackles puddling on the marble floor, his cloak spread out behind him.  
  
Five minutes later, once the next speaker was comfortably into his monologue, Kenren flicked his eyes briefly towards Goujun. "He said anything about the subject?"  
  
"Not yet." Tenpou deliberately put the weight of uncertainty to one side. _You'll have to trust me_, he'd said. _You'll have to take the risk that I'm not part of whatever's going on. As I take the risk that you're not part of it yourself._  
  
"Going to?"  
  
"It's likely to come up." He looked away from Goujun, before the dragon could sense his gaze -- assuming that he hadn't already done so -- and back towards Litouten again. There was a visible space at Litouten's right hand where nobody dared stand. _Reserved for Nataku, no doubt._  
  
"What are you going to say?" Kenren prodded.  
  
Tenpou would have shrugged, if he hadn't been standing at attention. "You could have asked me this last night."  
  
"I did. You distracted me."  
  
"Yes, well . . ." He considered. "There's no law against it."  
  
Kenren apparently didn't want to be diverted. "He's not going to like being involved in this."  
  
"I took care he wouldn't be."  
  
"You're _his_ Marshal. You want to bet Litouten can't find some way to blame him for it?"  
  
Tenpou slid his eyes sideways, considered Kenren. "Litouten isn't going to take on the Dragon Kings."  
  
"Not yet," Kenren muttered. Then his eyes widened. "Shit."  
  
Tenpou let himself register what the speaker in the background was saying. " . . . and, given the continued uprising by the youkai in the region, both high and low, it is our considered order that for the good of Heaven and the stability of Earth, the newly-named Toushin Taishi shall within the day take up his sword and . . ."  
  
"This could be awkward," he murmured. It could. He'd heard about the rumours, but hadn't expected action to be necesssary so soon. He hadn't yet managed to arrange protection from the regular army for Homura, short of the soldiers under his personal command, and Litouten had far too much influence among the "toushin taishi's personal squadron" . . .  
  
"Have you seen how he's smiling?"  
  
"Mnh?" Tenpou glanced towards Litouten, but the Great Minister still held the same cultured smile which he had been affecting since the beginning of the investiture.   
  
"Not him. _Homura._"  
  
Tenpou's gaze flicked across, his face still carefully mild. Homura was smiling, wide and brilliant, and glints of light from his sword danced across his face and reflected in his eyes.  
  
---  
  
Outside, Tenpou said, briefly, "Go and congratulate Homura."  
  
"You want me to --"  
  
"I need time." _And I don't have it._ He glanced towards where Homura was being bowed to by a group of courtiers, still smiling that delighted private smile. The courtiers moved and eddied uncertainly, unsure of propriety, unsure of safety. "You won't be telling Litouten anything he doesn't already know by talking to him in public. But I need to try to arrange something before Litouten arranges a formal sendoff for him, and for that, I need time. Congratulate him, introduce him to people, be obvious."   
  
"While you aren't?"  
  
"Exactly. And -- try not to get arrested."  
  
"Not this again. You're going to make me think you don't trust me, Marshal."  
  
Tenpou's mouth twitched for a moment. "It's the men I'm thinking of. How are they supposed to get used to you being in command if you keep on being arrested?"  
  
"Yeah." Kenren found a cigarette, brought it out, lit it.  
  
Tenpou smelled the tobacco and sighed in envy. His next meeting wouldn't be made any easier if he smoked a cigarette beforehand, but his whole body lusted for nicotine. "You're a sadist, General."  
  
"Believe it, Marshal."  
  
---  
  
Tenpou knew that Goujun would be heading for his office after the necessary civilities had been observed. He riffled and stacked candidates in his head as he walked, cutting and shuffling the mental card index of his mind. _Not him. Can't get him. Won't have him._ It had been an error to assume that the youkai were as subdued as rumour claimed.  
  
Goujun had one hand on the door of his office as Tenpou turned into the corridor. He turned, cloak swaying out behind him, at Tenpou's steps. "Marshal," he said, flatly formal.  
  
"Sir."  
  
Goujun regarded him with those flat ruby eyes, face carved and set and polished into stillness. "My office, Marshal. I believe there is something that you wish to discuss."  
  
"Sir." Tenpou followed, obscurely thankful that Goujun had begun the discussion. He closed the door behind him.  
  
Goujun seated himself, interlacing his fingers carefully. His blunted claws glinted in the afternoon light. "Explain, Marshal."  
  
Tenpou adjusted his glasses. "Sir. I would like to put forward a request as to the command of the squadron of troops attached to the new Toushin Taishi, which will shortly be assigned to earth duty, as witness the recent investiture."  
  
Goujun blinked, a quick flicker of eyelids. He made no other motion. "I am not sure that is what I asked, Marshal."  
  
"I wouldn't have thought you'd want to ask questions about my life as a private individual, sir." The words came out more easily than he had thought they would.  
  
"Ah." Goujun watched him. The dragon eyes were distant, speculative, looking for prey. "And you feel that -- private matters -- are unrelated in this instance?"  
  
"Well, that's an awkward question." Tenpou let himself shift position, casual, easy. "It would be inappropriate for myself, as a private individual, to bring matters before you that weren't connected with the army. Leaving aside any question of any sort of relationship to be presumed on . . ."  
  
Goujun's eyes narrowed.  
  
". . . it wasn't a question of the army. Sir." Tenpou let his smile drop. "What private individuals do in their own time, even if it's their rank that lets them back it, has nothing to do with the army and can't be held against the army. Or anyone else in the army. If the point gets pushed. Which it may."  
  
"And that's how you're putting it?"  
  
_Kenren's rank stripped away, just like that, as though Litouten thought he had the rank and authority to order it. The army now under the Great Minister's control._ "The army and bureaucracy seem very closely linked these days, sir," he said mildly. "It would be inappropriate of me to give them cause to be more so."  
  
"Mnh." Goujun's face was dangerously quiet. A reaction would have been preferable, Tenpou thought, even anger. That at least would have been something which he could respond to. Once he had thought that he understood his superior officer quite well. Now he was quite sure that he understood his superior officer better than most of Heaven; unfortunately, he now _knew_ how little that was. The dragon was a foreign language whose vocabulary he had only just begun to grasp. "Your position as Marshal is all that has made this recommendation possible. To suggest that you do so as a private individual is -- disingenuous."  
  
There was a closeness between the four dragon brothers that Tenpou could not share, could only observe. Four statues cast in different shades of marble, snow, fire, rain, ocean; four bodies that moved with the same grace, four minds linked in a way which he could not understand. He had watched them and still he could not _see_. "You have the right to treat me as disingenuous, sir," he said flatly. "There is no reason why you should give the new Toushin Taishi any support in public. It would be -- anh. It is inappropriate for any toushin to be treated as the figurehead of a private faction. Or even a public one."  
  
Goujun removed the weight of his gaze, looking down at the papers which were stacked in neat piles on the desk. He tapped one pared, blunted claw against the polished surface. "And given the toushin himself . . ."  
  
There was a moment of silence. Tenpou finally said, "Yes, sir?" and hoped for clarification.  
  
"Is there anything you wish to tell me, Marshal?"  
  
_And if I tell you, how much of it do you then become responsible for?_ That much about dragons he thought he understood. Older brothers have to take responsibility for younger ones, senior officers for junior officers, and the commander of an army for the actions of his Marshal. He let military stiffness close over him like a mask. "I have a suggestion to make, sir. That is all."  
  
Goujun tilted his head curiously.  
  
"Given that the Toushin Taishi Nataku is currently confined to bed due to his wounds, and given that a detachment of the army will be seconded to accompany the new toushin, it seems to me that Shien would be a good choice to command this section of the army. Nataku does not require his services at the moment, and Shien is known to be a reliable commander." _Extremely reliable, with a clear record, and most of all, a name for staying out of politics. A fastidious man, and one who Litouten could not buy._  
  
"Shien," Goujun said reflectively, looking up at Tenpou again. "You feel he would be a good choice?"  
  
"An excellent one," Tenpou said firmly. "Nobody could dispute it."  
  
"Would anybody try?"  
  
Tenpou pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. "It's a sensitive enough position that I feel it worth making a personal recommendation to you, sir. I'm sure that other people may feel strongly about it too."  
  
"Mnh. Very well. I'll have the orders issued."   
  
Tenpou blinked. He hadn't expected it to be quite that easy.  
  
"Safer to have someone reliable on the spot. I agree." Goujun slid a piece of blank paper across, and began to draft the order. "Is there anything else, Marshal?"  
  
Tenpou saluted. "No. Thank you, sir."  
  
---  
  
Homura was still enjoying the interest or nervousness of the courtiers. Kenren loitered nearby, eyes half closed in boredom as he leaned against the wall, cigarette dangling unattended between his fingers. He glanced across to Tenpou, and nodded once.  
  
_It's an interesting question,_ Tenpou considered as he approached the two. _Do I tell Homura that Shien is trustworthy, and let him know there's someone he should be able to rely on? Or might Shien take that sort of attitude as an insult?_  
  
He knew what Kenren would advise. _Tell the kid. Let him know he's not going to be alone down there._ Kenren's voice, solid and reliable and generous.  
  
And yet . . . part of Shien's strength, Shien's value to him in this, was that Shien was not biased in any direction, not even against Litouten. If he should tell Homura that Shien was an ally, then Homura might expect more than Shien would be prepared to give. Honour, certainly, duty, obedience, the proper balance and support between officer and toushin, that would surely be there -- but no more.  
  
Tenpou's fingers found cigarette and lighter automatically as he walked across the room. _Do, or do not._  
  
"Everything under control?" Kenren asked quietly.  
  
Tenpou nodded. "Anh. Sorry, Toushin Taishi. Didn't expect you to get sent anywhere so soon."  
  
Homura blinked those mismatched eyes, and smiled at him. "Don't worry, Marshal. You warned me about the possible dangers, didn't you? I knew what I was doing when I agreed to take the position. And besides -- I have a sword now. I'm Toushin Taishi. Don't you think they're the ones who should be afraid?"  
  
"Fear's a survival instinct," Tenpou said mildly.  
  
Homura shrugged, still smiling that cheerful smile. "Why do you smoke those things?"  
  
Tenpou took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it for a moment. "There's nothing like the first cigarette in the morning. After that, the rest are -- necessary."  
  
"Mnh." Homura stretched, rolling his shoulders. "I suppose I should go and be doing things." His voice lingered on the words, somewhere between pride and delight. "I'll see you later, Marshal, General."  
  
Kenren nodded, face oddly blank. "Later."  
  
"Later," Tenpou repeated, and drew on his cigarette again.   
  
Several minutes later, after the bow wave of Homura's passing had faded away, he asked, "What is it?"  
  
Kenren shrugged. "The kid was . . . being a kid, I suppose. Enthusiastic."  
  
"You're the one who told me that sometimes a man just wants to shoot something."  
  
"Yeah. Well. He's a kid. Maybe it's that I'm not sure he understands what it means."  
  
"Or?" Tenpou queried.  
  
Kenren blew smoke. "Or maybe he does understand what it means."  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	10. Sound and Fury

Sound And Fury   
  
The air down below smelt of -- no, the odd thing for Homura was that there were smells at all. He had grown used to the odours of Heaven, so prevalent that they became normal and unnoticed. Dry air and incense and cherry blossoms, spices shaken out from a fold of silk, old dust on parchment. Newer smells could still surprise him; old sweat on the Marshal, newer exertion and wine on the General, those acrid herbs that they both indulged in, mud and fresh flowers on the _itan_ child in Konzen Douji's keeping.  
  
_Damp and mould and slow decay in the darkness, a smell older than any of them, an undernote through all of Heaven that could not be left behind._  
  
Here the sun shone on an imperfect world, where leaves hung from the trees in blotched patterns of green and brown, and fell to blow across the drying grass, and where the earth was trodden down and barren and spatchcocked with bones.  
  
"Nataku-sama met them here," Shien said, arms folded calmly across his chest. The kami's eyes were closed, but Homura was not foolish enough to think that this meant blindness. He was all pallor and calm, pale hair bound back to show the lines of cheekbone and chin and brow, pale lashes-near invisible against his cheek, white bandages criss-crossing round his forearms and across his stomach, light robes that hung loosely on him.  
  
Homura would have discounted him as a porcelain ornament, but that pallor went with an edge. The casual, practical pattern of the other man's bandages, his economical movement in the sure knowledge that nobody would get in his way -- both spoke of a private certainty of ability and power.  
  
"And?" Homura asked, waiting to be entertained with some tale of the mighty Nataku-sama's great strength. _Yes, yes, I'm certain that there's never been such a toushin taishi. Do tell me again._  
  
Shien shrugged, a tiny movement of his shoulders. "And then he went into the fortress and defeated Gyumaoh."  
  
Homura smiled at him. "That's all?"  
  
"There should be more?"  
  
"No. Perhaps not." He looked across the battered field at the dark fortress. It rose from the earth harshly, without the elegance of Heaven's buildings, as though the wind had torn it out of rock and left it to stand there. "And all the youkai armies are in there?"  
  
"To the best of our knowledge." Shien's stillness tasted like disapproval now.   
  
Perhaps he was supposed to be behaving like Nataku? All purpose and focus and cold eyes and face frozen with determination? _I'm toushin. We do things my way now._ "Including their commanders?"  
  
"Indeed, Homura-sama." Perfect courtesy. Nothing to object to. Nothing to react to. Nothing at all.  
  
In an arc behind them, the forces of Heaven spread their vanguards across the Earthly hills, parade rest spoiled by the occasional whisper of conversation. Homura could feel their eyes on his back.  
  
It came to him slowly, like an unfolding lotus, as terribly beautiful, as utterly certain. They were watching the Toushin Taishi preparing to go out and do his duty for Heaven. Certainly there would be soldiers who wondered whether or not he would succeed, whether he would do it properly, who distrusted or doubted or hated or feared, but none of them -- none of them -- saw _Homura_ any more.  
  
_There was a time when I sat in a cell and was afraid of soldiers, when I dreaded all the might and majesty of Heaven, where it all crushed me down and left me to live a living death in the darkness. I was the outcast, the family shame, the thing that should never have been born. Not again. Never again._  
  
_Homura means toushin taishi, now. Homura means flame. Homura means death. Homura means Heaven's sword unleashed._  
  
He felt his lips curling into a smile. "Then I'll go and do my job."  
  
For a moment, a line of shadow -- or light -- showed at the edge of Shien's lids, something that blazed through the other's rigid control. "Homura-sama, the men are assigned to support you --"  
  
He cut Shien off with a casual gesture. His cape swung in the wind. _Earth airs. The smell of mud and dirt and bones and decay._ "I'm sure I can rely on your discretion. Bring in support if it's necessary."  
  
Each step towards the arching mouth of the castle's entrance was an exercise in control. No guards tried to bar his way; no youkai champions came forward to challenge him as he walked forward. The dusty earth clung to his shoes.  
  
The smile was growing in him like fire, spreading through him like wine. How simple things were now -- drawn to a point and stretched into infinity, clear and bright and perfect.  
  
They were waiting inside. A disciplined group of them, drawn up as neatly as the forces outside. It was the first time that Homura had seen youkai.  
  
"Leave this place," their leader said, and drew his sword.  
  
Flame blossomed between Homura's hands and became his own sword.  
  
How . . .  
  
. . . very simple.  
  
His feet left prints in the dust that lay on the floor.  
  
It was easy to find his way through the castle. Youkai came running to try to kill him. He cut them down and followed the trail that they left.  
  
The great hall was a surprise. Stonework arched high above, light glinting from the inlay in the ceiling and on the columns, falling in thin beams through hidden windows, laying a mesh of brightness and shadow across the youkai who were waiting there, drawn up to face him. Five stood in the center, barbaric tokens of rank marking them as the leaders of this group.  
  
Homura lowered the point of his sword, letting it rest on the mosaic tiles beneath his feet, and watched them. "You should have been content with your place Under Heaven," he finally said.   
  
---  
  
The wind moved across the dry field, trailing dust behind it, as Homura walked towards the dark mouth of the castle entrance. It tugged at the toushin's hair and cape, so that his shadow twisted and danced against the parched earth.  
  
Shien observed. He was aware of the glances which his subordinates were giving each other behind him, and the unease in the ranks of the army; it was all of a piece with the weather above, with the sun shining bright and harsh, but the sky spattered darkly with the clouds of a coming storm.  
  
He had been here before.  
  
_but it had been dark then, with the torch flames blowing in the wind, and the ground had been soft and fresh, and wet underfoot_  
  
Homura entered the fortress. The Emperor's nephew. The Emperor's _bastard_ nephew. Facts had positively thrown themselves at him, whether or not he had any interest in hearing them. It was impossible not to be aware of these matters; they wound themselves around the feet, as tireless and common as ivy.   
  
Shien had not expected to be given this mission, though on consideration he supposed that it was logical enough. Certainly his presence would prevent any inaccurate reports on events from being submitted to the proper authorities. He did not delude himself that Litouten had any sort of appreciation for him -- no, he did not delude himself into thinking that Litouten had appreciation for anything to do with Heaven's army, save as and when it was of use to him.  
  
Light flared briefly at the fortress entrance, the echo of some stronger blast from deeper within. Hot wind followed it, brushing at Shien's robe, warm against his closed eyelids.  
  
_Homura._  
  
Really, he knew almost nothing about this new toushin. The man was older than Nataku, old enough to have taken a man's place before now. Idly, Shien considered past moments in Heaven, moments when the Emperor's family might have been present, but he had no memory of Homura -- that burning presence, that bright unchancy smile -- until the last few months or so.  
  
Light pulsed again.  
  
It wasn't even a question of duty, as it had been with Nataku-sama. One could feel it in the new toushin's presence, like a fever, like a poison. He _wanted_ this.  
  
Shien fastidiously considered the thought. It displeased him.  
  
---  
  
There were probably formalities to this. "In the name of the Emperor," Homura began, and almost laughed in bitterly dry amusement. _The old man sits on high and cares nothing for me, and locked me away from birth, and yet here I am killing in his name._ "For creating disturbances upon the surface of the Earth, and for disturbing the order set down by Heaven, I have been sent to execute judgement upon you."  
  
Silence. The youkai glanced at each other, fear in their eyes, animal ears cocked to catch the breeze.  
  
There was no point in drawing it out longer. Homura tensed to step forward, then paused as one of the older youkai chuckled, a small precise noise that hung in the air.  
  
"Yes?" he asked politely.  
  
"Toushin Taishi," the youkai said, with exaggerated courtesy, "we present our compliments to you on this auspicious day. We regret that we are not worthy of the attention of the Toushin Taishi Nataku. We greatly admire your prowess in slaughtering common guards, and have no doubt that you are equally as competent when it comes to attempting the lives of kings. You are welcome to leave this place, and tell whatever tale you like in Heaven of what passed between us. But -- " He paused. He was older than the average, white hair and beard frothing around his face, skin markings scrawled down his right cheek and neck.  
  
Homura raised an eyebrow.  
  
" -- what happens on Earth is our business. Heaven would be advised to stay out of it. We and Heaven's ministers are done with each other."  
  
Insects. They were all insects. Crawling insects, earthbound creatures, chattering and bleating in these futile attempts at negotiation and politics.  
  
"Are you quite finished?" he asked absently. That smile was tugging at his face again. He let it rise in him.  
  
The youkai spread his hands. Lightning leaped between them. "You do not seem in the mood to listen."  
  
The air exploded in flame and movement and lightning. Power moved in him, divine power, as he answered the attack with fire and sword. An edge drew a thin line of blood from his cheek, and there was a time when this would have meant proximity, and weakness, and fear, but not any more, not again, never again. He was Toushin Taishi now, and this was what power meant, and this was what the Marshal had dangled in front of him, and every movement, every touch of his blade against their flesh, every sudden burst of light, every glorious action, was what he should always have been.  
  
_If I should hate you for anything, Emperor, it should be for keeping this from me for so long._  
  
His body and spirit burned with it.  
  
---  
  
"Sir." A junior officer saluted and waited for Shien's attention.  
  
Shien turned his head to acknowledge the kami. "Yes?"  
  
"Sir. Reports said that there were several of Gyumaoh's councillors and generals in there. Do you think it's likely that we'll be needed to assist the Toushin Taishi?"  
  
Shien considered the junior officer. His back was rigid with enthusiasm. Something that might have been hero-worship flashed in his eyes. "Sir, if we do," the kami continued, "request permission to . . ."  
  
There was no premeditation to it. Nothing at all. There was everything of premeditation to it. Ever since he had seen Nataku-sama staggering out of the fortress that night, white robes stained and body bowed with pain, ever since he had looked down at Nataku-sama in his sickbed and known his responsibility to his superior officer -- ever since he had made the choice to perceive or not to perceive, to know or not to know.   
  
"Denied," he said flatly. "We will be following the same orders as with Nataku-sama."   
  
The junior officer's eyes widened. Disbelief flared from him. "Sir. Request permission to speak."  
  
"Granted."  
  
Light flared from inside the fortress again, glittering in the windows, too harsh for cheer, too fierce for comfort.  
  
"What if . . ." His voice grew quieter. "What if Prince Homura can't handle it, sir? He hasn't been on this sort of mission before. He wasn't there when Nataku-sama subdued and bound Gyumaoh."  
  
_No. He wasn't there for any of it. How fortunate for him that everything was taken care of by the time he stepped into the position._  
  
Shien let the moment draw itself out, until the junior officer dropped his eyes. "Return to your post," he said.  
  
"Sir." The other saluted again and withdrew.  
  
_The toushin taishi is the toushin taishi to me, and nothing more than that. I serve. I obey orders. To do less would be a failure. To do more would be a partiality. With either I betray myself._  
  
The universe would decide for itself whether or not Homura was a worthy Toushin Taishi. All that he had to do was nothing. Nothing at all.  
  
There was no betrayal in that. He was as empty and as clear as scoured bone. The universe turned on its way, and the hot wind brushed against his face, and silence hummed in his soul loud enough to drown out any thoughts or memories.  
  
---  
  
There were more of them than he had expected. His sword moved and cleared the air in front of him, like a careless brush wielded by a master calligrapher, and his wrists ached. The muscles in his arms stung as he parried a blow, all the way from wrist to shoulder.  
  
He wasn't sure that he liked the feeling.  
  
The youkai facing him was fast. The earlier ones hadn't been this fast. He dropped to one knee, and brought his sword round in a sweeping cut that drew a line in the air from hip to shoulder, and caught his breath for a moment in the brief respite before another blow, before another wave of youkai came at him.  
  
He could always fall back into the passageway where they couldn't come at him so many at a time. _No. That's failure. That's defeat. That's weakness._ Pick them off a few at a time, then move in to take out the generals. _That hurt._  
  
The edge of a spear touched his forearm and stroked down it. Blood ran.  
  
_That hurt._  
  
He needed a distraction. The army would do. Sound and light and fury; Shien would bring troops in, give him a moment's distraction, a moment's breathing space.  
  
Blood ran down his arm and slicked his left hand, trickling around and over the hilt of his sword. A burst of thunder rang in his ears.  
  
_This really hurts._  
  
This wasn't supposed to be happening. He was toushin taishi now, and this meant not being weak, not being hurt. The world degenerated into a mosaic of movement and fire and blood and harsh breath, and now he was reacting rather than acting, responding to their blows, forced into defence.  
  
And suddenly it came to him, knotting coldly in the pit of his stomach with absolute certainty; the army wasn't going to arrive. There wasn't going to be a diversion. The Emperor was finally going to be rid of his _itan_ nephew. Nothing in his life would be as appropriate, as honourable, as this noble death in service to Heaven. The Emperor would be pleased. He would sit there like stone, surrounded by his sycophants, with the single grain of sand who had been called Homura finally removed from his silken slipper.  
  
Lightning struck him like a whip and flung him to his knees.  
  
_The toushin taishi has power, but I have none. The Emperor's blood has power, but I have none. The Marshal's playing piece was supposed to have power -- I'm sorry, Marshal, looks like you and your friends are out of luck -- but I don't have enough._   
He had to fight to get back to his feet, throwing off a group who thought he was easy meat now and rushed at him like animals. His left knee ached and throbbed.  
  
_And all I wanted was power to . . ._ The thought halted. _Power to avenge myself. Power to show them. Power to grind their faces in the dirt the way they did mine. Power to take away from them as they had taken away from me._ His body moved mechanically, parry and response. _Not just power. Power for a reason._  
  
_I will not let them take my revenge from me._  
  
Blood in his mouth.  
  
_They are my enemies and I will kill them._  
  
No holding back, no restraint, no mercy, no pity, no reserves, nothing except the eternal moment. He was a pillar of fire who rose from earth to heaven, and walked through the youkai in a wave of power and blood. It wasn't the sheer delight of physical exhilaration any longer, but the ache of power spent and muscles forced to go beyond themselves, and the sting of wounds, and death around him like a word painted on the universe and stamped into the flesh of those who had driven him to this flame of rage. Question and answer and enlightenment, all in the arc of a burning sword.  
  
It fell away from him just as his cape had slipped earlier from his shoulders, sliding away to leave him suddenly cold. Blood - his own blood -- traced warm lines across his skin, down one side of his face, across arms and hands, soaking into his clothing, dulling black cloth into a muddy brown. They were all gone. All gone. He could hear screams and running footsteps elsewhere, from a very long distance away, carried to him here where he stood at the centre of the fortress, the pivot around which this world turned.  
  
They had meant to have him killed. No. Be more precise. His uncle the Emperor had intended him to die here.  
  
He could not find any particular resentment towards the army which waited pointlessly outside; some would have had orders, some would have obeyed orders, and some might even have disliked those orders. The memory of Shien's face returned to him, so utterly blank and fastidious, those closed eyes tight shut against both Heaven and Earth. The other man had tried to warn him; he could hear it in Shien's words now, what was so carefully not said in that conversation. Though even then -- they'd been willing to let him die. They'd _expected_ him to die.  
  
His body rang and ached with emptiness, now that the need for violence and death was gone. But he'd won. He'd beaten them. For a moment he thought about sleep, about curling up on the floor amid the blood and dust and marks of fire, and falling over some private edge into darkness, carried away by a thunder of light and fury and pride.  
  
Homura felt his mouth curling into that smile again, edged and barbed with malice. He wouldn't say anything to anybody; he wouldn't have to. Those who knew would know, and those who did not know were below his contempt and not worth his interest. Later, later he would find his own ways of taking revenge, but for the moment, it would be enough to walk out through the doors of the fortress and look at the army, and smile at them.  
  
He was Toushin Taishi. He was the only one in Heaven who could spill blood.  
  
Homura's smile widened.  
  
_Thank you, uncle. I believe that I will enjoy my work._  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	11. Continuations

Continuations   
  
  
Tenpou's office was still tidy from their efforts earlier that month. Konzen could find a clear space on the desk to deposit his note. Of course the air still smelt of cigarettes, and sweat, and dust -- some things didn't change -- but it was better than it had been. The books on the shelves were in order. The scrolls were piled neatly. The floor was no longer a health hazard.   
  
This was the first time he'd had to himself -- genuinely to himself -- in several days, and the peace and quiet were refreshing. He'd hoped to find Tenpou here, but apparently the Marshal was dealing with some military matters. _Or just plain intriguing._ Konzen was happy enough to be left out of _that_ side of matters. He'd done his bit for Tenpou; the new toushin was out and about, and had by all reports succeeded dramatically in his first mission. Gokuu had behaved himself and was staying in Konzen's rooms, or at any rate, hadn't been caught doing anything he shouldn't for the last few days.   
  
He put the folded note down on Tenpou's desk. **I would appreciate a word when you have the time for it.** That would be sufficient.   
  
It was beautifully quiet here. He'd never appreciated that before. He had grown used to Gokuu bursting in on him, or the old hag wandering by whenever se was bored, or subordinates needing some sort of direction. Nobody knew that he was here, of course, and for a few minutes he had the silence to himself.   
  
Silence and books. He could always sit and read while he waited for Tenpou to return, instead of just leaving the note for him. After all, if Tenpou was going to be back shortly, as the junior officer had told him, then it would actually be more sensible to sit here and wait for him, rather than leaving Tenpou to come trailing in his wake.   
  
He drifted along one of the bookshelves, inspecting titles. Of course very few of them were going to interest him, as he certainly didn't indulge his curiosity by reading about human wars or youkai history. With a feeling of justified discrimination, he skimmed a shelf of commentary on mortal emperors. He tugged at the end of a scroll wedged in the corner, trying to get it out so that he could read the title.   
  
There was a ripple of movement behind him, a whisper of silk against silk and metal against metal from by the door. Konzen jerked around to see the new Toushin Taishi -- no, Homura, he should think of him as Homura, he _had_ supported his elevation and should be aware of his identity -- lounging against the doorframe, the door standing silently open behind him.   
  
"Were you looking for Tenpou?" he asked flatly.   
  
Homura gestured vaguely. The chain that hung between his wrists swayed loosely, the sound of metal links a brush on the edge of perception. He stepped away from the arch of the doorway that framed him, closing the door behind him. "Well, if he'd been here . . . Things are a bit boring at the moment. Is he around?"   
  
Konzen shook his head. "I'm waiting for him myself." He supposed he should say _something_ to acknowledge the other man's position. "I hear that you got back safely from that expedition. Well done."   
  
Homura's mismatched eyes narrowed. "Well, yes, clearly I got safely back. Wounds and all."   
  
Konzen blinked, one hand still on the scroll. "Oh? I didn't realise. Sorry." For a moment, prurient curiosity tempted him. _What were they like? Was it very dangerous?_ And really, Homura was scarcely an adult. _Are you fully recovered?_ No. A toushin taishi wouldn't want to be indulged like that. "Do you think you'll be sent down again in the near future?"   
  
"Possibly," Homura said, and smiled, a cat-smile that curved his lips and made his eyes glitter. "Konzen. Konzen Douji." He stepped further into the room. "It's been a while since I saw you. Weren't you at my elevation into the office?"   
  
"Somewhere at the back," Konzen said curtly. _He walks like Tenpou, as though he owns the space around him._ "I had to leave early. The Bodhisattva had work se wanted doing."   
  
"And you're always very eager to serve Kanzeon Bosatsu." There was an uncomfortable light in Homura's eyes. "How very convenient."   
  
Konzen shrugged, jerking a shoulder in a motion that felt all the more ungainly next to the other's casual arrogance. "Nothing convenient about it for me. It's my job." _Conversation. Make some sort of polite conversation. You did submit a memorial supporting him, after all._ "I suppose it's the same for you -- your job, that is. Nobody asks if it's convenient for you." He turned away to pull at the scroll again, trying to twitch it loose from where it was caught.   
  
"Here. Let me help." Homura was abruptly standing next to him, the edge of his purple cape brushing against Konzen's bare arm. He smiled at Konzen from too close, too near, as his hand closed over Konzen's and around the scroll.   
  
It came free with a sharp ripping noise, and a fragment of paper dangled loose at the end. Konzen pulled his hand out of Homura's grasp, away from those long warm fingers, jerking into a half-step back. The heel of his sandal clicked against the wall.   
  
"There are some differences in what we do for our superiors, I think." Homura's voice made something disturbing of the words. "But tell me, Konzen Douji --"   
  
"Yes?"   
  
"What do you think of what I've been doing?"   
  
"Well, it has to be done. I suppose." Konzen knew that he was being ungracious, and disliked the feeling that he was being goaded into it. He drew himself up sharply and squared his shoulders. "We each serve Heaven as we are best fitted."   
  
"How pragmatic." Homura wasn't taking the step back -- or steps back -- that Konzen had expected. "And you do that by . . . stamping forms."   
  
"I didn't realise that you took so much interest in my work." Konzen held the scroll at breastbone level between them. "Excuse me. I was waiting for Marshal Tenpou."   
  
"I think he'll be a while."   
  
"Oh. Then perhaps I won't bother waiting."   
  
"Really?" Homura leaned against the shelves. "So is that all you think of what I've been doing? That it was only "something that had to be done"?"   
  
He could try to push Homura out of the way, but if he failed, it would be undignified. He could try to move sideways, but that would be undignified as well. "Is there something that you want?"   
  
Homura reached out to touch Konzen's long tail of golden hair. "Well, given how obedient you are to Kanzeon Bosatsu, I wonder . . ."   
  
The door swung open, thudding against the wall on the far side. "Hey, Tenpou, I --" General Kenren stopped, looking from Konzen to Homura and back to Konzen. "Anything going on?" he finally asked.   
  
"Nothing," Konzen said from between his teeth. Damn Homura for putting him in an embarrassing position like that. It might even have looked as if they'd been flirting in some way. He didn't know the General more than as a casual acquaintance through Tenpou, and disliked the little he'd seen, but for the moment he was grateful to the other man for the interruption. "I was just going." He stepped past Homura, scroll still held like a barrier between them, and stalked towards the door.   
  
"Right."   
  
The General held the door open, then closed it behind him. Konzen regretted the lack of an opportunity to slam it.   
  
---   
  
The General shut the door, and just looked at Homura for a moment. "Well," he finally said. "You like the sort who can't fight back?"   
  
Homura raised an eyebrow. "I didn't realise he bent for you. Or is he the Marshal's?"   
  
The General leant against the door. "Him? He doesn't know the first thing about it."   
  
Homura blinked. _Someone with a face and a body like that, wandering around in those sandals and white silk -- someone in the middle of Heaven and not even aware of what's going on around him?_ "Don't be ridiculous," he said. "He works for Kanzeon Bosatsu and everyone knows what se's like . . ."   
  
"Yeah," the General cut in. "Se probably is. Doesn't mean hir nephew is. He's got the rank to keep himself out of things if he doesn't want to get involved. Tenpou says the closest he's come to anyone in the last hundred years is patting that kid Gokuu's head." He took a breath, and Homura could see the shadows of anger in his face under the smirking grin. "If you're actually looking for someone to put the moves on, kid --"   
  
"Don't call me kid," Homura said mildly. "You made me toushin taishi. That's not a job that a child does."   
  
The General's shoulders tightened. "Fine. I guess if that's what you want to be --"   
  
"Oh, I do," Homura cut him off. Anger warmed him, just as it had before, so many times before, and one kind of tension became another. "But I can see why you're annoyed about it. It's not as if you get to do anything like that, is it? General of the Western Army of Heaven -- it must be such a demanding post. You're not allowed to kill. You're not allowed to do anything permanent. I hear that you run around with a gun full of tranquiliser darts. Very commanding. Very . . . masterful."   
  
The General brought one hand down with a slam on Tenpou's desk. "You shut your fucking mouth. Ever had people serving under you? Ever known what it's like to have to take command?"   
  
"Why should I?" Homura asked sweetly. "I just kill people."   
  
"Yes. Yes, you do. And I've seen how much you enjoy it."   
  
"What's it to you?" Homura leaned against the desk, and let his smile broaden. "Jealous?"   
  
"No." The General leaned towards him. He smelt of cigarettes and wine. "Why the hell would I be jealous of something like that? Perhaps I'm just worried about you. Homura. Perhaps I see you getting out of your damn depth and thinking you know it all and about to walk into trouble. There's more to it than just a big sword, you know."   
  
Homura boiled at the patronising, condescending note in the other man's voice. For a moment he wanted to hit back in the worst, most painful way he could think of. _And is that what the Marshal gets from you?_ No. No. There were better ways of handling this. "That's what you think," he said, controlling his voice to blandness, his face to a sharp smile. "But you aren't the one down there risking his neck, are you? You get to stay back from the action. Don't worry, I'm not blaming you for obeying orders . . ."   
  
"Shut the _fuck_ up."   
  
"Make me."   
  
The General jerked forward, finally goaded into motion, and grabbed the front of Homura's coat with his fists, hands warm through the silk of Homura's clothing. They stood eye to eye. "Don't -- _don't_ -- try that sort of game with me."   
  
"What sort of game?" Homura asked, half dizzy with the blend of anger and delight that ran through him. He raised his own hands, locked them around the General's wrists. "I'm quite serious."   
  
"I know you are. That's why you're being such a damn idiot. You can't solve everything with the edge of a sword, _Toushin Taishi_."   
  
"Can't I?" The General had taken him down once before. He wondered if the other could do it now. "Perhaps it depends on how badly I want something."   
  
The General's eyes narrowed. "And what do you want?"   
  
The door opened, and the Marshal walked in, a cigarette between his fingers. "Konzen -- oh. Kenren. Homura." He looked between the two of them, eyes suddenly sharp and dark behind his glasses. "Excuse . . ."   
  
"Don't trouble yourself," Homura snarled, wrenching himself loose of the General's grip. "I was just going."   
  
"That's right," the General said from between his teeth. "He was just going."   
  
Homura shoved past the Marshal, who was still standing stupidly in the doorway, and slammed the door behind him. His cape rippled as he stormed down the corridor. He was angry with Konzen. He was furious with the General. The Marshal didn't even deserve consideration.   
  
But right at this precise moment, he was most bitterly angry with himself. _If I'd said something different, if I'd done something different . . ._ They should have given him the respect he deserved. _Kid._ Wasn't what he'd done enough? Didn't it matter that he'd faced as many enemies as Nataku, that he had come back alive and covered in blood? _You can't solve everything with the edge of a sword._   
  
Couldn't he?   
  
---   
  
The sound of the slamming door still hung in the room.   
  
Kenren leaned against the desk, and sighed. "Shit. I need a drink."   
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	12. Sakura In The Wind

Sakura In The Wind   
  
Homura had not realised at the time how predictable he had grown. The mingled fear and deference from the courtiers and bureaucrats had grown boring for the moment, and the army officers seemed to want something from him that he didn't know how to give. The young ones watched him with hungry eyes, as though they expected him to go and kill more youkai at any moment. He wouldn't have minded, but apparently none needed killing yet.  
  
There were, of course, fantasies. There were always fantasies. Now that he was free from the prison cell which had encompassed his life, anything was possible. He could dream of conquests splendid enough to blot all memory of Nataku from people's minds. He had nothing against the child, of course, but -- well, if he should be the only Toushin Taishi, that would make life so much simpler. It might even please the Marshal and the General.  
  
Homura was aware that he owed the two of them something for their actions in promoting him to this rank. _Then again, it's a business relationship. They're getting something out of it. I don't need to feel personally indebted. There is no reason why I should feel indebted, as long as I bear them in mind and stay Toushin Taishi._  
  
He smiled slowly. Hardly any likelihood of him wanting to give that up.  
  
And there were other dreams; more private ones, ones that warmed his blood and made his heart race when he closed his eyes to envisage them. _The army cheering him, the officers kneeling to him, even the Marshal and the General bowing their heads and going on one knee to him, looking up with admiration in their eyes._ He looked at the cherry trees around him, but the white masses of petals were the robes of the bowing throng, and the light breeze was the echoes of distant cheers. _The Emperor reaching out one hand to him, nodding to him, acknowledging he existed._ The brilliant golden sunlight was the gold on imperial robes, the clear blue of the sky their perfect silk.  
  
And, behind them all, something else.  
  
_The Emperor bloodied and kneeling before his sword, knowing he would receive no mercy. Homura as Emperor . . ._  
  
Someone behind him and to his right coughed. Homura let the dreams fall away, and turned on one heel, careful to let the motion seem powerful rather than nervous. His right hand twitched, eager for the weight of his sword.  
  
The man who had been waiting raised both hands, displaying their emptiness. "Toushin Taishi. Homura-sama. Any chance of a word?"  
  
He didn't look like any sort of courtier. His short orange hair was untidy, as much so as the General's, and a patch across his right eye partly masked but did not conceal the scar which disfigured that side of his face. He leaned against the trunk of the cherry tree which partly sheltered him, rather than standing upright as most of the military did, and the barrel and butt of a large gun showed over his right shoulder and down from his left hip. There was a half-amused, half angry turn to his lip as he stood there, permitting Homura's inspection. His unmilitary, uncourtier-like jacket was open at the throat, showing a red inner lining, and his jeans and boots were as inappropriate as Homura's own clothing.  
  
"You have my full attention," Homura said politely, and fumed at his own stupidity for allowing his route to be so easily predicted. He'd been warned about possible assassination attempts, and while at the time he'd thought the Marshal was being over-cautious, now it was much easier to believe in such things. Not that the other man would be able to take him, of course. He could cut him down before he'd managed even to bring that gun into position. But if he could miss one man, he could miss others, and . . . This feeling of uncertainty was far too familiar. He had thought that he had left such things behind.  
  
"Right." The other folded his arms. "No names, no pack drill, Homura-sama. I'm not going to pretend to be some sort of diplomat, because, no shit, I'm not a diplomat. I've been sent to make an offer. The name's Zenon."  
  
The breeze played with the edge of Homura's cape. He nodded again. "What sort of offer, Zenon?"  
  
"Think of it as a suggestion," Zenon said. "You might want to consider how long your current support's going to last. They -- you know who I mean -- never wanted a toushin anyhow, just picked you up because they needed to get someone, and you think they're going to keep you around once you're not necessary? Everyone knows the Marshal's more into reading books about youkai than actually fighting the damn things. So he pissed a certain person off, figured he needed a toushin to cover his ass, got one. The Marshal's going down soon enough anyhow. You'd do better to be working for someone who knows that Heaven needs a toushin and who'd be glad to have you on the team."  
  
"Someone like your current employer," Homura stated dryly. "Who, since you aren't going to mention his name, sits beside the Emperor's ear and who is the main person at threat from my current occupation. It does rather weaken his child's position, after all, mm?"  
  
Zenon shrugged. He managed to make the movement look somehow dubious in itself, rather than the Marshal's grace or Konzen Douji's awkwardness. "Yeah, well -- you know who I work for. Either you're going to say yes, which means no problems, or you're going to say maybe, in which case you're not going to want to tell your friends about it, are you? Or you're going to say no, no shit, no way, but then you already knew who I was working for. So no loss there."  
  
That made Homura's mouth curve in a wide smile. "You don't sound particularly nervous."  
  
"Should I be?" Zenon grinned in response. "Hey, we've already settled that you're not going to fuck with me right this minute, huh? So we can talk about it like two reasonable men."  
  
_Power._ It was a different flavour, but the undertaste was still the same. The power to be approached, to be negotiated with as an equal, to be _valued_. "Well." Homura shrugged. "I'm surprised that you -- or your superior -- think I'd come across that easily."  
  
"Oh? You want the offer concrete?"  
  
_Does he think I'm that stupid?_ Homura wondered. "Let's just say I'm curious."  
  
"Oh well." Zenon shrugged, and for a moment Homura thought there was something flat and contemptuous in his eyes. "Name your price. You want silks, Homura-sama? Property? Rank? More rank? Women? If my boss can't get it, it's not worth getting. But the real thing he's offering you is patronage. The Marshal's got rank, but if he screws up, then you're pissing in the wind."  
  
"Mm." Such a bright day. So many intriguing possibilities. Such a future to play with. "Sorry. No."  
  
"You're sure?" Zenon kept his tone light.  
  
"The fact that your superior wants me to sign up -- no, that he's sending his servants to talk to me -- well." Homura smiled brilliantly. "It says to me that he's not as certain as he thinks. Of course, I could be wrong. But if he didn't need me, then he wouldn't bother to make approaches."  
  
"You're making a mistake," Zenon said flatly. "He doesn't like wasting things. That's all. It'd be easier if you came over. It's that simpler. If you don't . . ." He shrugged again. "Well."  
  
"Well." Homura shrugged in turn. "And you'd really trust me if I was that quick to sell them out?"  
  
Zenon grinned wolfishly. It creased his face and tugged at the scar which ran under his eyepatch. "There's nothing shameful in a man knowing where his advantage lies, Homura-sama. Ah well. See you round." He flipped a brief, cheerful wave.  
  
Homura was about to ask, _that's all?_ but he caught himself. It would be folly to appear less self-possessed than the other man. "I'm sure we will," he said, politely, and turned away.  
  
A bird was singing somewhere in the trees. Homura was still smiling, buoyed by anger and power and sheer delight. Of course he'd never considered saying yes; he had enough notion of proper loyalty towards the Marshal and his friends. And, of course, there was the point that he still needed their political support and advice in the current situation. Life was complex, and he was a part of it. But rather than simply being one of the cherry petals of Heaven, as loose and easily shaken as a single blossom, he was now one of the winds that shook the branches, a power who others respected.  
  
Each step was a pleasure when he could compare his current life to what had gone before. He was the toushin; he was Homura-sama, even to other warriors; he was an honourable man who would not betray his allies.   
  
Perhaps, some day, he would even be more than that.  
  
He wondered where Konzen Douji was.   
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	13. Kingdom Of The Blind

Kingdom Of The Blind   
  
The mirror is --  
  
Zenon's hand moves to his eye, to touch the edge of the patch, to move along the edge of the patch, to trace the old scar which is so much a part of his face now that he has little memory of unblemished skin. There was a time when his flesh was as unscarred as that brat Homura's, but that was --  
  
_cut off cut away a slice taken out don't think about it_  
  
He rises from the bed. He avoids the frown of the Zenon reflected in the mirror.  
  
_step by step we go through the day_  
  
Litouten will have a job for him, he hopes. He's in the mood for killing. Death and pain and the familiar weight of his gun in his hands, the stock balanced, the pulse of bullets.  
  
The sheets on his bed are still rumpled, untidy. If Mirei had been there she'd have been straightening them, her eyes downcast, but with that curve to her mouth that said of course she expected him to leave them untidy, of course she would be there to neaten them, of course she would be _there_ . . .  
  
Bile rises in Zenon's throat. He walks across to the window in quick ungainly desperate strides, and his hands clench on the stone of the windowsill as he looks out into the tiny closed courtyard there. The tree at the centre of the courtyard is covered with the eternal cherry blossom of Heaven.  
  
His world got taken away yesterday and he still hasn't adjusted. Of course he hasn't adjusted. His mind registers profanity. His mind registers screaming. It's like a burn; sword wounds are cleaner, bullet wounds are more precise, and neither would leave him feeling so raw and so scoured. There is no safe place for his mind to rest. There is nowhere where he can turn his eyes that does not bring back what has just happened to him.  
  
_My wife and my son are dead._  
  
There. Say it. Does that feel any better? The words are a pattern cut into him, and slowly they begin to burn again. Perhaps this is what a soldier feels like when he has lost a limb; the known absence and _still_ the pain.  
  
Zenon's fingers move to his eyepatch. Last night, he made a bargain. Last night he received a promise. Shifty and untrustworthy. He still didn't know if he could trust the bastard, but there had been something about him which Zenon had felt he could depend on. Something -- pride, that was it. A craftsman's pride. Someone who'd lie about anything except one thing, and in that thing he'd be honest.  
  
_and you're such a good judge of people, aren't you?_  
  
Zenon can feel the heat under the eyepatch, the burn of leashed power.  
  
He hadn't had anything there for decades in any case. Lost long ago. It wasn't as if he'd given up anything to . . .  
  
Zenon turns and walks to the mirror, and looks at himself in it -- such a warrior, such a soldier, such a practical man, such a killer of youkai -- and smashes his fist into it. Shards of glass fall to the floor and shatter further. The empty frame stares back at him.  
  
Of course you can stay here, Litouten had said, with what was probably the closest that the Great Minister could come to real sympathy. He hadn't expected the other celestial to care about Zenon's   
  
_wife and child, think the words, wife and child_  
  
but at least Litouten had shown the proper respect for Zenon's loss.  
  
He'd been half drunk when he'd found the other man. The immortal, the white-robed man with the sharp eyes and the concealing glasses who'd been so involved with little Nataku and who everyone in Litouten's household knew wasn't to be thwarted or interfered with or even involved with. Everyone was scared of him. That figured. Litouten didn't like him either, but Litouten had his own reasons for dealing with him. And now Zenon had his own reasons too.  
  
A fragment of the broken glass that's still trapped in the edge of the mirror's frame winks in the morning light. That was last night. This is today. This was the morning. This was where everything started again and where suddenly his life is empty and there is nowhere to go and nothing to start with. Except for his job. He still has that.  
  
Yesterday he'd talked to the brat Homura and made the offer that Litouten had given him to pass along. Yesterday he'd had a wife and child.  
  
Yesterday he'd gone Down Below  
  
_I'm moving in fucking circles here, I need to think of something else_  
  
and Souei had been standing there in shadows and blood and said, She wouldn't do what she was told. Or, She got in the way. Or something like that. The words run together and get lost and perhaps it's better that way, not to remember it too clearly. The smell of blood in the air, and what was that doing in _his_ home?  
  
Zenon's right eye pulses. He presses the heel of his hand against it.  
  
Yesterday night he'd made a bargain. He'd said, Give me a way to hurt the bastard, give me a way to kill him. You can do these things. Everyone knows it. Give me what I want.  
  
Or?  
  
Or I'll kill you.  
  
Oh well, Zenon-sama, when you put it that way, how can I say no? Yes, things can be done, there is in fact something which I can do to help you, what a good thing you came to me?  
  
Words blend together. He'd asked. The other had said yes.  
  
And when it was done and the instruments had been put away and the smell of something -- something else? so sharp, harsh, rotten -- had faded from the air and he'd taken the leather strap from between his teeth, what then?  
  
_You've got this powerful eye but I strongly suggest not using it because the chances are good, in fact excellent, that it's beyond your control. Oh of course I might be wrong, take your eyepatch off any time and see whether you can do it, but do leave a list of your next of kin first, hm? Yes of course it'll do whatever you want, power at your very fingertips as one might say, but I'm very much afraid that it might consume you if you try using it. Pricetags on everything, Zenon-sama. Pricetags on everything._  
  
Words blend together and time blends together and everything comes down to this moment and this fractured glass and this burning eye and this utter scream of loss which he will not, will _not_ give voice to.  
  
Zenon stands in a room in Heaven, and he will not weep, because he is a man. He will take vengeance instead.  
  
It comes to Zenon that killing something would be pleasant.  
  
Zenon picks up his gun fron the bedside table, and swings it over his shoulder. It nestles against him like a cat, it clings against him like a woman.  
  
Litouten first, and perhaps killing after that. Minute by minute he will walk through the day, he will do his job, his fucking job, because that's what a man does, and perhaps . . .  
  
_but nothing's certain, Zenon-sama_  
  
. . . perhaps he can stop thinking about his wife and son, because the loss is too big for him, and it's eating him inside like a burn, and it leaves him hollow, and it makes the Heaven around him look like gilded trash, the setting for a play, fragile and empty and just waiting to come tumbling down.  
  
--- 

Fanfic Page 


	14. Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart   
  
Smoke coiled from their mutual cigarettes and blended somewhere in the air between the two of them. "I'm not saying you're wrong," Kenren said, not for the first time that evening. "I'm saying where do we go from here?"  
  
Tenpou took a sip from his cup of wine. His hair, neglected again, hung in thick folds around his face, lank in the lamplight. "That's a little awkward. We didn't start this as an attempt to make ourselves some kind of rivals in power to Litouten . . ."  
  
"Damn right we didn't," Kenren cut in.  
  
". . . and it does seem to have worked, to some extent. Homura is now established as Toushin Taishi. Nataku is no longer the -- weapon -- that he once was. We've made progress." He refilled his cup, then Kenren's.  
  
Kenren took advantage of the pause. "So what now?"  
  
"We should perhaps be making preparations for some retaliation. I'm sure that Litouten would find matters much simpler without Homura as part of the equation."  
  
"Well, yeah." Kenren waved a hand vaguely. "But it's not as if he can kill the kid, is it? And he's got no plausible reason to have Nataku do anything. Homura's in high good odour with the Imperial Presence. Killed youkai, upheld Imperial Honour, blah blah blah. So okay, maybe we've weakened his position a bit, but there's not much he can do back at us, short of, you know, one of us having an accident and falling out of a window on the twentieth floor with a dozen daggers in the back."  
  
"Mm. Yes." Tenpou watched the glowing end of his cigarette. "At least Konzen's safe from that. Litouten's not going to go after the Bodhisattva's nephew and make an enemy in that direction."  
  
"Marshal..."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"About the Bodhisattva."  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"Would she -- he -- whatever, is there a chance she might do something about the current situation? Thought she was supposed to be merciful."  
  
Tenpou considered. "I don't know. I can't predict which way se would jump, so to speak. The Bodhisattvas seem to act on more, I don't know -- divine? -- priorities than the rest of us. The rest of them don't seem to get involved in anything at all. Kanzeon Bosatsu's a wild card."  
  
Kenren smirked. The alcohol was buzzing in him now, sparking reactions, linking thought to thought in a dazzling chain of brilliance. "You hate that, don't you, Marshal? Not knowing which way people are going to jump?"  
  
Tenpou drew himself up straight and adjusted his glasses. "Sometimes they surprise me."  
  
"Yeah, well. Don't sweat it." Kenren refilled both their cups. "Look, what about that idea you had earlier, that Litouten was behind some of the youkai breakouts which Nataku went to deal with? If you can get some kind of proof of that, would that help?"  
  
"Possibly, but the problem is getting that proof. All the aristocratic youkai who were involved are dead or bound by now, and I don't think Heaven's going to take the testimony of commoners."  
  
"Assuming commmoners knew anything," Kenren said glumly. "Okay. Try it the other way. Litouten can't have been running down round there himself. Mister high-and-mighty Great Minister get his robes mucky Down Below? Not likely."  
  
Tenpou looked interested by this train of thought. "You're suggesting he had an agent to do it for him. To make contact with the youkai and incite rebellion."  
  
"Well, he'd have had to, wouldn't he?"  
  
"Mm." Tenpou stared blankly at nothing in particular. "I admit I've considered that question too, and there are several possible candidates for such a go-between. On the other hand, Litouten undoubtedly pays well, and any agent of his would have reasons to fear an assisted suicide if he tried to betray his master. We'd either have to pay better, or . . ." He trailed off, and gestured vaguely with his cigarette. "Other options would be preferable."  
  
Kenren thought about where that sentence had been going. The thought went past the words, and he remembered stairs, and stone walls, and broken ribs, and the cut of the whip. He looked at Tenpou. The other man's eyes were dark stones behind the glass of his spectacles, ungiving, unforgiving.   
  
_I don't want him to be the man who'd do that --_  
  
"Yeah. Something else would be preferable," he agreed.  
  
"And he probably doesn't keep records, either," Tenpou said regretfully. "A pity. Documentation in his own hand would be such a useful thing to have."  
  
"Keep on thinking." Kenren lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old one. "We've got all night to talk about it."  
  
"Yes, I heard you telling the junior officers that you were -- what was it -- "taking the Marshal out on a bender..." Really, General, this does nothing for your reputation."  
  
"Leaves you squeaky clean," Kenren said unrepentantly. "I'm the rebel round here. Dragging you into trouble. I don't know why you put up with me."  
  
Tenpou smiled, and his face warmed again from the previous coldness. "I'm sure there are reasons."  
  
"Like I know all the places in Heaven you can get decent wine."  
  
"Mhn. That too."  
  
---  
  
Later they went to look for another bar which Kenren swore he remembered from two years ago. The moon was huge and pale in the sky, as white as cherry blossoms, and the air was still and hushed. Not that it was a bar as such, Kenren explained in between swigs from the jug at his waist, just a place for people who liked to play cards and talk a bit, and if occasionally money transmigrated into the pocket of the guy who owned the house, that was just one of those things that happened, wasn't it?  
  
Tenpou was too busy lighting his latest cigarette to reply at first, which was why he noticed the change in the quality of light from the street down to their left, and his first thought was, _How curious, you would think that several people down there just moved to block the light, which would mean that they are coming this way_, and his second thought was, _Why should there be several people out here close to us taking pains to move quietly_, and his third thought was, _If I look behind me now and am seen doing it, they will realise they've been spotted, and will move in on us_.   
  
Kenren's head tilted. The other man's shoulders tensed. One notch. Two. "Marshal," his General said, "I left my cigarettes back at the other bar. Want to step back and fetch them?"  
  
"Only if you're coming with me," Tenpou said casually.  
  
The footsteps were audible now, both from ahead of them, and from somewhere behind. _I underestimated Litouten. I didn't think he'd try anything this blatant._  
  
A theatrical cough came from behind them. Kenren turned first, the skirts of his coat swinging out, and Tenpou a moment later, more delicately, one hand raised to adjust his glasses.  
  
_Yes._ Tenpou recognised the man. His name was Zenon, and he was in Litouten's service. There was some sort of scandal about him, something to do with his frequent trips to Earth. _Wonderful, I was looking for an agent and now I find one._ Zenon had his gun slung casually across his back, one hand hovering near its butt as though he yearned to touch it. His single visible eye glittered in the moonlight.  
  
"You got a problem?" Kenren asked.  
  
"No, General. It's you and the Marshal who've got the problem." Zenon's lips came together in a thin, bitter line.  
  
Tenpou wrapped authority around himself like a cloak. "Excuse me, Zenon-san, but it is not your place to inform us what we may or may not do."  
  
"Funny thing, that." Zenon's hand twitched, hungry for the butt of his gun. "You see, Marshal, I've got this warrant here from the Great Minister for your arrest. Both of you. Now, see, I think that gives me all the authority and position that I could ever fucking need, right here and now."  
  
_And you've got a weapon and your men will be armed as well._ Tenpou had to spare a moment of what would almost have been admiration for Litouten, if it hadn't been so flavoured with disgust. _Who'd think of carrying weapons casually in Heaven, where nobody kills and nobody dies? Who'd think it was necessary?_  
  
"You can't just fucking arrest us," Kenren snarled. "Litouten can't _do_ that. Because first, right, the army isn't under his jurisdiction that way, and second, because the Marshal here," he gestured with a thumb back towards Tenpou, "ranks Litouten, just like he ranks you, Zenon."  
  
Zenon shook his head, and laughed. "You don't get it. You two are under arrest. Period. The Great Minister says so, and what he says goes, and that's all there is to it."  
  
There were men in front of them by now, and men behind them, and they would all be loyal to Litouten -- who else, after all, would be sent out on a mission like this? -- and nobody would be coming out of the houses around them to investigate strange sounds by night, and who would have thought that this sort of audacity would be possible in Heaven? Through the clear swell of fury which moved through his mind, Tenpou thought, _I warned Homura, but I should have taken more care for myself. Stupid. Stupid._  
  
Kenren and Zenon were watching each other like wolves preparing to go for the throat.  
  
Very softly, Zenon said, "Give me an excuse. Just give me an excuse, General."  
  
_. . . I let one of my men die . . . _  
  
"We are prepared to discuss the matter with the Great Minister," Tenpou said flatly. "Stand down, General."  
  
Kenren flicked a glance back over his shoulder at Tenpou. "You sure about this, Marshal?" His tone was casual, but Tenpou knew what wasn't being said. _You get out while I distract them._  
  
"As before, General, you're underestimating the situation." Tenpou spun factors in his head. How long before somebody noticed they were gone, and started to look for them? How long before Goujun had a matter which he wanted to take up with him or Kenren, and found them gone? Or before Konzen or Homura made enough fuss to launch an investigation? Litouten might have the power to keep them under private arrest for a day or two, but by then Goujun -- or Konzen, or maybe even Kanzeon Bosatsu -- could pull rank and arrange some way to get them out. What was more worrying was what might occur in their absence. Homura alone, and Konzen, and Gokuu, and . . . No. Handle the matter as it was, get what leverage they could, keep Zenon off balance if possible. He smiled, and tasted his own rage. "Who are we to argue if the Great Minister sends such a polite request for us to come and discuss matters with him?"  
  
Zenon's face was tight with aggression, lips drawn back in a snarl. "Yeah. That's a sensible attitude, Marshal. Real sensible. Might have expected it of someone like you. Now, the General's more the aggressive type, so it's a good thing you're here to talk your -- General out of it. Right?"  
  
_He wants me to attack._ In the same moment, absolute and precise, _Strike him down_ and _Shall I let myself be provoked by so small a man?_ and _He repeats words with no understanding, what insult to me is there in this?_ Yet something must have shown in Tenpou's eyes for that moment, for Zenon's hand flinched towards the butt of his gun as though he had seen a cobra spread its hood and rear in front of him.  
  
"We are coming," Tenpou said mildly, conscious of Kenren's fury beside him, the guards spread around them, the silence of Heaven beyond that.  
  
"Yeah." Zenon took a deep gulping breath. "Yeah. But I think I want to feel secure about this. Put the shackles on them."  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	15. Innocence Drowned

Innocence Drowned   
  
Morning court was --  
  
"Hush," he whispered angrily to Gokuu.   
  
Morning court, Konzen decided, was --  
  
"Not _now_," he added furiously. "Just keep quiet."  
  
Morning court was among the things he usually tried to avoid, and rightly so. If it wasn't for the fact that he hadn't been able to find Tenpou anywhere else, he wouldn't have bothered coming along, and even now he wasn't convinced that it had been a good idea. All the less so because Gokuu had insisted on coming along, had refused to be left behind, and was needing increasingly loud whispers of _Shut up!_ to stop him from saying or doing anything irretrievable.  
  
"I should have left you back at the office," he muttered, "and I'll take you back there if you don't shut up now!"  
  
Gokuu clung to his legs and eased round behind him. He could imagine the monkey's face, a combination of _oh Konzen please Konzen please please Konzen_ and _I'm so sorry Konzen_ and _what did I do wrong anyhow Konzen_, all at the same time and somehow not disagreeing with each other.  
  
"Bah." He looked over at where the Bodhisattvas would be sitting, had they chosen to attend, but they weren't and they hadn't. If he wanted to go and question Kanzeon Bosatsu, he'd have to seek hir out in hir own territory. The thought irritated him.  
  
The rest of the court was much as usual -- no, wait, that was the first _toushin taishi_ over there, Nataku, next to his father and apparently healthy again. Several army officials hovered nearby, though their attention was clearly more on Litouten than on his son. Litouten himself seemed pleased about something, as sleek and purring as an overfed cat.  
  
No sign of the _toushin_ he'd helped get into place. Konzen had to reluctantly concede some sense to Homura, if Homura was avoiding court on purpose.  
  
The situation had grown more and more tense over the last few days. Konzen was aware that there were things which Tenpou wasn't telling him, but he wasn't quite prepared to ask what they were yet. He'd actually _done_ something -- supported Homura's nomination, backed Tenpou's request -- to try to protect Gokuu, but he wasn't sure if it was going to work. Yet again, he wished that he'd locked Gokuu in his office rather than let the brat trail after him to court.  
  
He felt far too exposed.  
  
There was also -- _also?_ -- the point that Litouten's position didn't seem noticeably weakened. It was more, perhaps, that the Great Minister hadn't managed to expand it any further. _Which in itself is something, I suppose_, he thought grudgingly. He'd been backtracking Litouten's rise through the bureaucracy, and it was really quite impressive. If he hadn't disliked the man on general principles, he'd have wanted him in his own department. A bit of family disgrace had nothing to do with ability to work. Litouten's rise had been steady, though not so fast as to draw the eye or alert his superiors to a potential rival. Then a pause for a while -- the period when Litouten had realised that his family's shame, whatever it was, wouldn't let him get any higher, presumably, and when he'd been looking for some other way to advance. And then the arrival of Nataku, and -- well, and the current situation.  
  
When Tenpou hadn't shown up in his office this morning, as he'd requested yesterday in a series of notes, Konzen had decided that he'd track the Marshal down himself for a conversation. The situation was not improving. If this meant that Konzen had to go to morning court to find him, so much the worse for Tenpou.  
  
No, the situation wasn't improving. There were orders being issued through the bureaucracy that Konzen couldn't trace. He knew that they were going through, he could track their passage like sharks in the water, and he was aware that something was being arranged, but he couldn't find out what. It irritated him, but more, it worried him.  
  
He became conscious that Litouten was looking towards him, and murmuring to his son, and now Nataku had those unchancy golden eyes fixed on him as well . . .  
  
. . . no. Not on him. On Gokuu.  
  
Abruptly Konzen decided that they would be better out of there. He bent down to tell Gokuu, "We're leaving. Now. We'll find the others later."  
  
"But I want to see Ten-chan and Ken-nichan!" Gokuu wailed. He pulled at Konzen's tunic hopefully, then somehow managed to wriggle around him before Konzen could stop him. "And that's Nataku! I want to talk to Nataku --"  
  
"Hush," Konzen hissed between his teeth, grabbing for Gokuu's shoulder. "Be quiet or you'll get hurt --"  
  
But Gokuu was already dashing across the floor, running towards Nataku and Litouten, and for the first time Konzen knew the true meaning of the word _horror_, in the sense of seeing what was going to happen and not being able to stop it, being a moment too slow, a second too far behind.  
  
"Nataku!" Gokuu's voice was childishly clear in the sudden shocked silence. "Nataku, I was trying to see you -- they wouldn't let me come, I wanted to, but you're all right now, aren't you, and it'll be okay . . ."  
  
Litouten looked down at Gokuu. "This child -- someone's been letting him run wild. He's out of his depth. But no matter." He turned to Nataku. "Kill him. Here and now."  
  
"You . . . bastard!" Gokuu threw himself at Litouten, hitting and scratching, and the Great Minister tumbled backwards under the child's weight, landing in an untidy sprawl of clothes.   
  
Konzen stood there, frozen with shock and uncertainty. _Where did he learn that language. Kenren. Of course. This isn't supposed to be happening. Litouten's minions are taking their time about picking him up. Gokuu. I have to get Gokuu out of here._  
  
"This is your fault, telling Nataku weird stuff like this!" Gokuu crowed triumphantly, sitting on Litouten's chest. He turned towards the other child. "Nata--"  
  
Nataku's eyes were as clear and as distant as the autumn moon. He reached out with one pale hand to grasp Gokuu's wrist. "Get away from my father."  
  
Silence spreading like ripples now, not the earlier silence of shock, but the deeper silence of fear.  
  
"My father is my lord," Nataku continued, and even Konzen could feel the growing swell of power around him. "Whatever he tells me to do, whatever he does to me, my father is my reason for living." His great sword appeared in his free hand, balanced as easily as a ribboned toy. "Whoever harms my father, no matter who it is --"  
  
-- and Konzen wanted to shout to Gokuu to get away from the killing puppet, but there was no breath in his lungs to do it, and his heart was beating so fast that he could not speak --  
  
"-- I'll kill him."  
  
Gokuu looked at Nataku, and there was nothing but trust in his eyes. Nataku's sword might as well have been a toy, and the whole hall with silenced courtiers and trembling guards, just a field of flowers. "Nataku," he said, smiling. "Nataku. About my name . . ."  
  
Nataku's sword touched the metal plate at Gokuu's neck.  
  
"I'm Gokuu. Nice to meet you."  
  
_As if there were nothing to be afraid of._ Konzen should move, he knew it, he wanted to, but fear held him tighter than chains. _As if there were no reason why he should be afraid._  
  
The two children were frozen in their own tableau. Slowly, slowly as death itself, Nataku said, "Gokuu . . ." It might have been a question. It might have been an answer.  
  
In a flash of steel, Nataku reversed his blade, and sliced into his own shoulder. Blood jetted out, splashing against Gokuu's face, and Nataku fell to the ground in a slow crumple of pale robes, the blade tumbling from his hand to clatter on the marble.  
  
Gokuu shrieked, jumping off Litouten, and threw himself on his knees next to Nataku. "Nataku? Nataku!"  
  
There was screaming in the background, screaming and shouts and questions, but Konzen didn't hear them. He was running towards Gokuu, able to move at last.  
  
Nataku grabbed at Gokuu's wrist. "Gokuu -- it's not over there . . . it's here. Look . . ." His words were lost in coughing, and he spat out blood. "Can you see it?"  
  
Litouten had pulled himself up to a sitting position, but his face was blank, stunned. Clearly he hadn't expected this. _Who could have?_  
  
Nataku's hand opened and fell, releasing Gokuu's wrist, and Nataku's eyes closed.  
  
"Hey -- where? Where is it?" Gokuu grabbed for Nataku's shoulders, shaking the unconscious child. "You gotta . . ."  
  
_We have to get out of here_, Konzen thought, mind suddenly working again with a vicious cool clarity which would have surprised him if he'd had any spare time or thought for surprise. _We have a moment before Litouten comes out of shock and orders Gokuu arrested or killed, and I am Kanzeon Bosatsu's nephew and have that much authority to use, but after that --_ He caught Gokuu's shoulder and pulled. The blood that was pooling across the floor squelched under his sandals.  
  
". . . stand up," Gokuu was still saying, desperate, uncomprehending. "You gotta tell me, cause I can't see it . . ."  
  
_He doesn't understand injury, he doesn't understand death._ "We have to go _now_." Konzen went down on one knee to pick Gokuu up in his arms. On the other side of Nataku, one of the military officers was trying to stop the bleeding, a pale man in pale robes with his eyes shut and with light glimmering at the edge of the lids like the lightning which edged stormclouds. He didn't even spare Konzen a nod. Konzen didn't return one. "Gokuu. Come on."  
  
Gokuu was still trying to hold onto Nataku. The officer reached across with one pale hand and broke Gokuu's grip.  
  
"_Now_," Konzen said desperately. He pushed himself upwards, knowing how ungainly he was, but for once not caring, and turned to stagger towards the great doors.  
  
In the background, Litouten was shaking his head, comprehension slowly coming into his eyes. The Great Minister rose to his feet, and said to the pale officer, "My son -- how is he?"   
  
Gokuu buried his head in Konzen's shoulder, his tiny body shaking with hiccupping sobs. Hot tears soaked into Konzen's robes, and the blood still on Gokuu's hands smeared dark foulness on the white silk.  
  
Konzen drew himself up to his full height and walked past the guards. They looked at him for a moment -- _I am Konzen Douji, nephew of Kanzeon Bosatsu, and you are nothing next to me_ -- and did not try to stop him.  
  
Outside there was a fragile silence, but behind him the throng still in the hall buzzed like frantic wasps. There was no time. Time had run out. He had to find Tenpou, or Kenren, or even Homura, or even his aunt. He had to do something.  
  
"Konzen -- Konzen, will Nataku be okay?" Gokuu asked tearfully.  
  
_No, he won't._ "Yes." _No, he won't, and I have to protect you somehow before you're killed for it._  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	16. The Things of the Heart

The Things of the Heart   
  
Litouten remained sitting as the _toushin_ was shown in. Rising would have shown an uncomfortable degree of weakness, and while he intended to make it clear that the boy's help was needed -- if not quite necessary -- he had to establish some sort of rapport first.  
  
"Homura, _toushin taishi_," he greeted the boy. "Please. Be seated."  
  
Homura dropped into the chair, cape billowing around his legs, and crossed one knee over the other, leaning back. How predictable; an attempt to demonstrate his insouciance and casual relations with the Great Minister. How different from Tenpou Gensui and his polite, Since when were _you_ in a position to offer _me_ a chair, Litouten?  
  
What a pity for Tenpou Gensui that it was too late for him to reconsider his position.  
  
Litouten considered Homura. Had the Emperor ever looked like this in his youth? Unlikely. The boy's mismatched eyes were an obvious mark of his heritage, and enough to make any right-thinking person nervous. He flattered himself that he wasn't showing any particular shock or disgust. The boy carried himself arrogantly, asking for some sort of challenge, but without the sort of control that the more senior military officers knew.   
  
"I hope I haven't inconvenienced you by asking you to come here today," Litouten began. "There are a couple of matters that I would like to discuss with you."  
  
Of course he'd taken pains to hush up the earlier events at morning court, but rumours would be spreading round Heaven already. Rumours about the morning's events -- _damn_ that _itan_ monkey and damn his keeper and damn the timing of the whole business, and damn that interfering scientist who wasn't here when he was most needed. At least the Marshal and his General -- or should that be the General and his Marshal, perhaps? -- weren't around to make matters worse.  
  
Matters must be resolved quickly. Nataku was . . . unavailable. Litouten needed someone with the legally backed power to kill.  
  
"I came as soon as I heard that you requested my presence," Homura replied politely. "I hope that I was not overly late in arriving."  
  
"Wine?"  
  
"No, thank you."  
  
Litouten settled back and folded his hands. "I believe that one of my servants spoke with you a while ago, about the possibility of renegotiating certain of your political connections."  
  
Homura smiled like a cat. "I have so many people speaking to me," he said smoothly. "But I am sure I would remember someone who actually said that he spoke on behalf of the Great Minister."  
  
The boy clearly had some political sense. Good. A man with no political sense would already have walked out. A man with a lot of political sense would never have come in the first place. What Litouten needed at this point was a _toushin_ who thought that he knew what was going on, and didn't realise how little he understood. "I am pleased to see that we understand each other," he temporised. "I'm also glad to see that you aren't so tainted -- forgive me, affected by the propaganda of certain factions in Heaven, that you feel endangered by coming to visit me."  
  
Homura reacted as Litouten had expected -- _as all these so-called warriors always react_ -- eyes widening, breath coming a shade sharper. "Danger is hardly a consideration."  
  
"Well, of course not," Litouten replied smoothly. "Not to the _toushin taishi_. And certainly not to a _toushin_ with experience, like yourself." The boy had to know he was being flattered, but he didn't seem averse to admiring recognition. "And likely to get more, considering the current situation on Earth."  
  
"You think so?" The spark of interest, the hungry curl of the lips, all spoke of such primitive desires, such easily controlled urges. "Well, I'm sure you would know more about it than I would."  
  
"More about it than even the army," Litouten agreed smugly. "Their information isn't always as good as could be desired. Of course, they have their own interests in the matter, which don't always coincide with Heaven's own needs."  
  
"Which are?" Homura tilted a hand, urging Litouten to continue.  
  
"The need to stamp out such problems at source, quickly and definitively." Litouten leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk. The marble was cold through the silks of his robes. "Mere tolerance only breeds later troubles. Youkai are like humans. Sometimes Heaven's messages must be presented in a manner that cannot be disputed."  
  
"And that," Homura murmured, "is the _toushin taishi's_ job."  
  
"Exactly." Litouten nodded slowly, deliberately. "It's a shame that the army doesn't always appreciate that. I suppose they feel that they need to show they're still necessary, that they can handle some of those threats themselves, but really -- it's all so pointless. Heaven should be united and working to a common goal, not factionalised and struggling."  
  
"I see." Something in Homura's eyes said, _Yes, I do see, I see very well, I see you sitting opposite from me and offering something to me -- but what are you offering?_  
  
"Mm." Litouten forced a smile. "I suppose I feel that Heaven's ends -- and our own -- would be best served by an obvious demonstration of our common intentions. And of course, while I would not wish you to lose any valuable connections, there are some links which you might have to . . . shall we say, consider less important than before?"  
  
"You put an interesting argument," Homura said slowly. "By the way, may I offer my condolences on your son's current inconveniences?"  
  
_He does know._ Litouten's stomach tightened, then relaxed. _He knows, and he wants me to know that he knows, and he wouldn't do that unless he thought he could get something out of it. He's willing to make a deal._ "You may," he said graciously. "We hope that the poor boy will recover soon."  
  
"Yes." Homura's eyes glinted. Those mismatched _itan_ eyes. Small wonder the Emperor had wanted the boy hidden away. "It must be difficult to see your own son in such a situation."  
  
Litouten swallowed the insult down, tallying it mentally for later repayment. "I am sure it is something that you will understand when you have children of your own. But I fear that we wander from the subject."  
  
Homura gestured loosely with one hand, the loop of chain dangling from the shackle at his wrist. "I apologise. Please continue."  
  
"I suppose that my question might be, ultimately, what sort of reward the _toushin_ might expect from Heaven in exchange for doing his duty. Even if certain old connections had to be cut . . . short, I have no doubt that he would find new ones. More rewarding ones. Which brings us to a relevant question." Litouten folded his hands together. "What do you actually want, _toushin taishi_?"  
  
---  
  
At that point it stopped being a joke, a daring moment of bravery, an easy assertion of virtue and honour. At that point it started to become real. Homura let his face stay as still as marble, trying to bite down the combination of laughter and fear which rose in him. This had been a game, when he would come to Litouten and listen to the other man's offers and turn him down and walk away. The Marshal and the General hadn't been around to tell him that it was a bad idea. And as for Konzen Douji -- well, nobody had heard where he was since that fiasco this morning (and what exactly had happened? Nobody had been willing to give him the full details, short of Nataku somehow injuring himself when being ordered to kill that little monkey child, and being unconscious ever since) and little surprise there. Really, when he thought about it, it only made sense for him to come and speak to Litouten. Someone had to find out what was going on.  
  
But there was nothing which Litouten could offer him that he wanted. That made it simple enough. The Marshal and the General and Konzen Douji might not be friends, but they were allies. He'd paid little attention to the Marshal's comments on Litouten, and couldn't care less about any antagonism they might have for each other. What, after all, was Heaven but a struggle for power? Why be surprised when Litouten threw his own son into the gambling stakes? Why _care_ about the matter? Heaven would continue, and the Emperor would squat on his throne like a silk-draped toad until the end of time.  
  
He folded his arms across his chest, settling back in his chair. "I can't say that there is anything I particularly want," he answered blandly enough. "I am grateful for your generous thoughts -- "  
  
"Oh, think again," Litouten replied. "Surely a young man like yourself, even if he is of the Emperor's household, looks for more in life than he currently has."  
  
Homura couldn't prevent the momentary sneer which touched his face at the mention of the Emperor. "I am the least of that household," he replied, "and need to make my own way in the world. A _toushin_ such as myself only wants to do his duty."  
  
"And you have no personal interests?" Litouten shook his head slowly. "I must commend your devotion."  
  
Didn't he? No. Power Homura had already, and would have more in time. Allies he had. Fear and respect he had. Other matters, more personal things -- well, in time he would find a way to get their attention, to _make_ them notice. And then everything would be as he wanted it. He felt his mouth curl in a smile. "My interests are all in my duty, Great Minister."  
  
"Even your friendships?"  
  
Homura shrugged. _It's alliance, it's not friendship, they never said it was friendship, so why not be honest with him and show him how little he has to work with?_ "A servant of Heaven has no friends. He may join forces with others, the better to serve, but that is a different thing." _And why should there be anything else? Why should he want what others might have -- that ease, that comradeship, that comfort -- when respect was more sincere and more warming to the soul?_  
  
"Astonishing. So many people in Heaven want something. It is a pleasant surprise to meet a kami who simply wants to do his duty." Litouten's eyes were hooded and thoughtful.  
  
Homura simply smiled in return. _Yes, Nataku is unavailable. No, I will not be yours. I have power and I choose not to give it to you._  
  
"Yet -- " Litouten broke off, as though considering his words. He leaned back in his chair. "A _toushin_ might also consider what might happen if change were to come to Heaven, and if the Emperor himself were to be brought down. Who would he serve, then? If the Emperor is gone, then who rules Heaven, and what is the nature of the Heaven to whom he owes duty?"  
  
Homura's breath caught in his throat. _Impossible. Treason. Unthinkable. So, so thinkable._ "You speak treason," he said, and barely recognised his own voice.  
  
Litouten didn't stir. "I speculate about a future that may never come to pass. Down Below, they speak of the Mandate of Heaven being passed to a new ruler. Even here, the Emperor has not ruled forever, and will in time pass beyond. Such things can happen -- or do you never dream of the future?"  
  
"I . . ." Homura fell silent. There were enormities which he had never dared to consciously envisage, and now they came pouring into his heart after Litouten's words, like dark lake water down a long-dry streambed. _Do you never dream of vengeance? Have you forgotten those years, all the days of childhood, left to rot in a stone-floored cell where the torches bloomed like flowers on the wall and then died to leave you in darkness until the guards could be bothered to light them again? Have you forgotten what it was like to be a toy, a diversion, a shame, a disgrace, a worthless thing, and all of it because the Emperor declared you so?_ "This cannot be." He stilled his hands with an effort. "It is not possible."  
  
"_Toushin taishi_," Litouten said softly, "anything is possible to the man who makes it so. I am Great Minister, and once I was something to be scorned and spat on. You are _toushin_, and throughout Heaven they fear your name. The future is what we make it. We can choose to serve Heaven as _we_ see fit."  
  
Even the Marshal had never spoken of Heaven as though it could be torn down and rebuilt. Even the General had never rebelled against Things As They Were.  
  
"And, in this speculation -- where do we stand?" The words came so easily.  
  
"We stand together," Litouten answered. "There would be many who would rebel against the new order of things. The _toushin_ strikes down those who are a threat to Heaven. They would be such a threat. Even those who had supported the previous Emperor in all his cruelties and austerities -- even they, perhaps, might need to be swept away. Your words would be heard. Your opinions would have weight. Your sword would hold the balance between life and death, _toushin taishi_."  
  
_I cannot_, Homura thought, and then, _I can_, and _He will_. "But what surety --"  
  
"Why should I seek another _toushin_," Litouten interrupted, "when we two understand each other so well?"  
  
It was like a gulf opening before him, and all he had to choose to do was to walk forward, to extend his hand, to say yes.  
  
"It is true, what you said," Litouten continued. "There are no friendships. But there are alliances. We join forces, the better to serve Heaven, and the better to serve ourselves. This is the truth which others hide from you, that you cannot do both at once. But you can. We are the proof. Together . . ."  
  
"Together," Homura said, each word paid out, "we could shake Heaven, Great Minister, and reorder it to our liking."  
  
"Anh." Litouten smiled. "Now you understand, _toushin taishi_."  
  
_I could tell others that he speaks treason. But who would believe my unsupported word? Why should they think such a thing of the Great Minister?_ And yet it was true, all true; he could hear the hatred in the other man's voice, the bitterness, the long-held thirst for revenge. _I know them. I have tasted them all in myself. I have hated for so long, but I have never dared to think of revenge, because I did not think it was possible. And now that someone offers it to me . . ._  
  
Litouten unlaced his fingers. "You must cut your links with the past, _toushin_, and build your future."  
  
_I am no longer a frightened child. I am a man. I can have power, if I choose to take it. If I choose . . ._  
  
"I am the _toushin taishi_," Homura answered. "I kill at the Great Minister's desire. What more is there to be said?"  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	17. Walking Into Darkness

Walking Into Darkness   
  
Heaven's late afternoon sun was burning gold in the sky, the same shade as Kanzeon Bosatsu's girdle and jewellery as se waded among hir lotuses. The water swirled around hir legs, soaking hir silken robe and turning it transparent. Beneath it, hir flesh was as white as the silk itself.   
  
"Anh -- am I disturbing you?" Konzen asked uncertainly. He hesitated at one edge of the courtyard, and the band of shadow from the arch under which he stood fell across him smoothly and completely. Gokuu was sitting in one of the inner rooms, preoccupied with a pile of buns. _Good. Let him stay out of this conversation._   
  
Kanzeon looked across at him and shrugged. Hir breasts swung under their thin covering of gauze; large-nippled, full, a woman's breasts, just as se had a male organ below, between hir legs. Bodhisattvas were perfect in both genders, though the other four did not flaunt it as Kanzeon Bosatsu did.  
  
_Old hag._  
  
"I have a problem," Konzen said, dropping the attempt at courtesy.  
  
"I know," Kanzeon answered.  
  
The air was heavy with the scent of lotus flowers and the particular smell of pond water under hot sunlight; fleshly, earthly, unnecessary. He had already sent five messengers to enquire whether Tenpou Gensui or even Kenren Taishou had returned yet. The messengers had all returned, which was good. The response had been universally negative, which was not.  
  
"I would like you to protect Gokuu," Konzen said. He made the request as bald as possible, trying to avoid ambiguity. He was too used to his aunt's fondness for shades of meaning and the opportunity to insert a knife.  
  
Kanzeon tilted hir head. "Interesting choice of name you made for him."  
  
"You have the authority," Konzen went on doggedly. "Litouten can't overrule you. Take care of him in your precincts, or have him sent down to Earth, but either way, keep him safe."  
  
"Why don't you stay here with him?" Kanzeon suggested. "If anything would keep him here where it's safe, it would be you. You are quite right. Litouten won't trespass on my precincts."  
  
"I have to ask some questions." It had been growing on him like a migraine for the last few hours. He couldn't just hide in here. If Tenpou and Kenren weren't around, then he had to make sure that Homura was staying out of trouble, and find out what the fallout from Nataku's wound was, and half a dozen other things. He quite simply couldn't afford the luxury of remaining in hiding. But equally, he wasn't going to take Gokuu out into it. "I want you to look after Gokuu."  
  
"And does he want to be looked after?" Hips swinging, se walked across to the edge of the pool, and sat on it. Hir ankles dangled in the water, pale against the green stems and leaves of the lotuses. "Why are you asking me, Konzen?"  
  
"Because," he said through gritted teeth, "I am _not_ taking him out there."  
  
"Does he know you're leaving him with me?"  
  
"Not yet."  
  
"He can stay if he wants," Kanzeon said, after a moment. Hir voice was male-female, like hir face, neither one nor the other.  
  
"But --" _But then he'll follow me._ "No. You have to keep him here."  
  
"Konzen." Hir voice was gently chiding. "I don't do that."  
  
"He's a child. He doesn't understand. You can't let him walk out into danger." He could hear the rising tone of anger in his own voice, and tried to bridle it, tried to keep his hands at his side and not gesture in annoyance.  
  
"He's old enough to decide what he wants." Nothing seemed to disturb Kanzeon Bosatsu's surface, as calm and unmoved as the lotuses in hir pool. "I will not keep him here if he chooses to go."  
  
Konzen's hands tightened. "You are one of the five rulers of the universe and you will do _nothing_?"  
  
"I cannot save those who will not be saved."  
  
He had to make hir see. "Gokuu is a child."  
  
"A little animal that they brought up from Down Below." Se shrugged again. "Tell him to stay behind. Tell him to wait for you. If he stays here, he will be safe."  
  
Konzen's nails cut into his hands. Afternoon sun, bright garden, dazzling goddess, all of it as beautiful as Heaven was and always would be, all of it no help at all. He could claw at it and it would be as much use as trying to scrape away marble with his bare hands. "You know," he said, very carefully, very distinctly, "that he won't do that. You bitch."  
  
"I know that you won't do that either."  
  
He turned to walk away.  
  
"Konzen Douji," se said.  
  
He wouldn't give hir the satisfaction of watching him turn around, but he paused.  
  
"If you are with him, then you can protect him to some degree. From his enemies. From his friends, even. But nobody can protect him from himself."  
  
Konzen walked away, and left the sunlit courtyard for the shadowy marble passage.  
  
---  
  
Goujun was irritated; it ran in his veins under his white skin in a slow current of annoyance, not yet full anger but certainly more than mild disquiet. Neither the Marshal nor the General was available. Neither of the two men could be _found_. This was irresponsible behaviour of a new and surprising nature. He could have believed it of Kenren Taishou, but had thought better of Tenpou Gensui.   
  
Doubtless the General's fault. They had gone drinking. They had not yet returned. Kenren Taishou should perhaps find out that he had not so irreplaceable and irreproachable a record as to survive continued behaviour of this sort.  
  
There had been some minor disturbance earlier in the morning, but the ripples of it had not yet reached him. Kami and their everlasting squabbles for precedence; undisciplined, untaught, inelegant. For a brief moment, he allowed himself to think of his brothers. His kingdom. His world. Outside, the sun set in the west, the only thing that moved in this calcified Heaven. Even then, nothing _changed_.  
  
There was a quick, polite rap at his door.  
  
"Yes?" he called.  
  
One of his adjutants opened the door, but didn't try to enter the room. The man looked nervous. "Goujun-sama, Konzen Douji requests a few minutes speech with you."  
  
What would Konzen Douji want with him? Wait. Konzen Douji was a friend of Tenpou's, or at least, an acquaintance. He might know something. "Show him in," Goujun directed.  
  
The adjutant retreated, then returned a moment later, holding the door for the yellow-haired kami. _An unnatural colour, with that white skin; better the shadings of gold throughout that the golden dragons have, where they are all metal, fluid and shining and proud, rather than this kami mottling and shading, this jerky ungainliness of movement._ There was a child with him. Goujun remembered having seen the boy -- the _itan_, he remembered now -- before now, tagging behind the kami, or occasionally playing with Tenpou or Kenren. The child clung to Konzen's trousers, hands twined into the fine silk, eyes wide and yellow and scared.  
  
Konzen waited for the adjutant to close the door, then gave a jerky, neat bow, which Goujun returned, rising. "I apologise for the short notice of this visit, Goujun-sama, and thank you for agreeing to see me."  
  
"Us," came a faint mutter from knee level.  
  
Konzen quite visibly set his jaw. "I apologise for Gokuu's behaviour. Children. You know."  
  
It would have been improper to comment on the license apparently allowed to children here. Doubtless it was all of a piece with the eventual adult kami. Goujun nodded, and let the matter drop. "Please, be seated. Might I ask what you wish to discuss?"  
  
Konzen folded himself down into the chair, resting balled fists on his knees. The child curled up against his leg, apparently unwilling to break the physical contact. "I came to ask about Tenpou Gensui. And Kenren Taishou," he added, after a moment's hesitation. "I am aware that you are their commanding officer, and . . ."  
  
But Goujun was already shaking his head. "I regret that I am unaware of their whereabouts. I understand that they went out drinking, and have not yet returned."  
  
Konzen's face tightened. "I see. Thank you for your kindness."  
  
Goujun disliked the politics of Heaven. However, matters were apparently proceeding apace without him, and Konzen Douji must have some reason for needing Tenpou's assistance. And Goujun had never heard anything particular to Konzen's discredit. Indeed, what he had heard was all about the kami's reluctance to involve himself with things, and his distaste for the rest of Heaven. _Perhaps not all kami are born as complex as the others._ "I believe there was some sort of disturbance this morning," he began, fishing for signs of emotion or comprehension in that pale face, those angry purple eyes.  
  
The child winced, lowered his head, and cuddled closer against his protector's knee. Konzen Douji himself snapped straight in his chair, hunching his shoulders defensively. "Gokuu is under Kanzeon Bosatsu's protection," he ground out through his teeth. "What happened was hardly _his_ fault."  
  
"What did happen?" Goujun asked. _Some childish mischief, no doubt._  
  
Konzen Douji swallowed jerkily. "Litouten ordered his son to kill Gokuu. For no reason. With no charge. Nataku refused and turned the blade on himself. He was unconscious when we left."  
  
Goujun's hand stilled on the surface of his desk. The edges of his short-cut nails scraped against the smooth marble. Those few words, dragged out and minimal as they were, could shake the whole of Heaven. He had no interest in the kami as such, but he had observed the Great Minister's rise, and knew how much of it depended on his son the _toushin taishi_. And all of that in jeopardy, because of the actions of two children? No wonder Konzen Douji carried himself so tensely. He knew, even if the _itan_ child failed to understand. No wonder he was looking for his allies. "What you are saying . . ." he began.  
  
The door banged open, throwing a sudden slice of lamplight into the darkening room. Goujun looked across, annoyed at this uncharacteristic behaviour from his adjutant.  
  
"Goujun-sama," the kami stammered, shock showing on his face, "we've just had word. They're -- they're having a trial in the Great Hall, Tenpou Gensui and Kenren Taishou have been brought in to be tried for treason, and the other _toushin_ is there, the Emperor's nephew . . ."  
  
Goujun cut him off with a gesture, rising to his feet in a coiling surge of energy. Anger ran in him now, anger and blinding outrage. _How dare he. How DARE he._ So simple a sentiment to express such utter fury. Litouten had trespassed on his prerogatives, was preparing to condemn his men, his subordinates. It was time to take this up with Litouten, before the Throne if necessary, and in the strongest terms. This was an offence against the good order of Heaven, an offence that went to the marrow of his bones and insulted his very nature as both Dragon King and commander.  
  
Konzen Douji was attempting to say something. He ignored the kami, and stormed out through the door and down the corridor that led towards the main complex and the Great Hall, a crackling fury white as marble, with eyes as crimson as rubies.  
  
This was intolerable.  
  
Somewhere behind him there might have been a child's running feet, and an adult's voice calling in desperation. He did not listen.  
  
This was intolerable and he would put an end to it.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	18. And Life Is Full Of Partings

And Life Is Full Of Partings   
  
"So it's started? I won't stop it and I won't save you. This battle belongs to all of you now."  
  
---  
  
The shackles weren't like Homura's. They weren't graceful or elegant. They were heavy and efficient and short-chained. They kept Tenpou's arms behind him, rather than allowing any flowing gestures or meaningful waves, and while they might demonstrate the respect -- or even fear -- that Litouten and Zenon had for them, they made it hard to sit down comfortably.  
  
"Guard's still there," Kenren reported, not for the first time.  
  
"Anh. So they're not coming to fetch us yet." Tenpou pointed one foot at the flagstones next to him. "Have a seat."  
  
Kenren dropped down in a swish of leather coat. "We're screwed, aren't we."  
  
Tenpou deliberately misunderstood. "We have friends who'll be looking for us."  
  
"Yeah." Kenren patted his hip pocket automatically, as he'd been doing perhaps four times an hour since they'd been locked in the cell. His cigarettes failed to miraculously appear this time, just as they had done all the times before. "We do. But -- shit, Tenpou. We've both pulled fast ones before, but doing what Litouten's just done, open arrest like this -- if he could do that, he might do anything."  
  
_I underestimated him._ "He might," Tenpou agreed. _It takes a very special sort of mind to completely ignore the rules and playing board and pieces, and simply use a sword on the opponent. A sword called Nataku._ "He might have us executed."  
  
"Yeah." Kenren contemplated the opposite wall.   
  
"Too late now."   
  
Kenren half grinned. "It always was, Marshal. We both knew that."  
  
Tenpou's heart lifted oddly. "I suppose we did."  
  
"You reckon it's going to be official or unofficial?"  
  
Tenpou considered. "Official. We're going to be an example."  
  
"And the charges?"  
  
"Does it matter?"  
  
"Hell, yeah. What if Goujun walks in? What if your friend Konzen's managed to get some sort of hearing?"  
  
Tenpou shifted position so that he was leaning against Kenren, feeling the other man's body warm through the layers of clothing, an inch of heat against the miles of cold stone walls around them. _And what if not?_ He'd wondered about death for far too long now. He'd seen other people meet it, from deliberate action or from pure chance, and still he knew nothing about it. _What happens then? What's beyond that sudden moment when the light goes away and the body is emptied?_ He didn't want to die, but that had never stopped him wondering.  
  
_And what if?_ He wanted to live. _No. I'm not giving up yet._  
  
"We can have Zenon called," he suggested. "Have him questioned. Even if he's gone down to Earth, they should be able to locate him. Failing that, we get Goujun-sama to challenge Litouten's evidence -- that is, we suggest that he does so."  
  
"Failing that?"  
  
"We dive down the chamber pot and swim for safety?"  
  
Even in the darkness of the cell, even with his eyes shut, he could feel Kenren giving him a very expressive look. "Marshal, _I_ like staying clean."  
  
"Oh yes. I quite forgot." He smiled. "Excuse me."  
  
---  
  
When the guards came for Kenren and Tenpou, they left the shackles on them, and didn't even offer them the chance to clean themselves or brush off their clothing. Kenren spared a thought for Tenpou, whose white lab coat had suffered more than his own black greatcoat, then glanced over the troop of a dozen men. He didn't recognize any of them. Fair enough; Litouten really would have to be a moron to put some of the Western Army on this detail.   
  
The men were avoiding his gaze. Shit. That was bad.  
  
He followed Tenpou up a winding succession of stairs, some of them painfully familiar -- why yes, this was the flight which he'd been helped to fall down several times on his previous visit to the cells. It was enough to make a man nostalgic.   
  
Zenon wasn't with the squad this time. _Guess he's got something more important to be taking care of for Litouten._ Or perhaps it was a precaution on Litouten's part. A subordinate who wasn't around couldn't be conveniently questioned. Damn.  
  
They were on ground level now, and sunset light was streaming through the windows that they passed. He hadn't thought that they'd been that long in the dungeon. It hadn't seemed like most of a day.  
  
He was in step with Tenpou, of course, though neither of them chose to glance at the other. The guards around them held to a slow ceremonial pace -- look, here are the condemned prisoners, being marched through the palace as a fine example -- and the whole thing had the air of a funeral cortege. _Except that nobody dies in Heaven._  
  
_But there are always exceptions._ Tenpou would probably be able to quote them if someone let him near the records piled in his study, and if anyone could dig him out once he'd started checking them, and been distracted, and started on another paper trail in search of fascinating mortal wars . . . The thought made Kenren smile.  
  
The audience hall was full of courtiers and senior officers. He kept the cheerful smile pinned to his face, but his eyes flickered from side to side as he and Tenpou were marched up the main aisle, to where Litouten stood before the Emperor's throne. Nobody was talking. There wasn't even the usual half-whispered buzz of comment and carping.  
  
_They're all too scared_, he thought, _too scared even to make the noises that would please the Great Minister._ And then he saw who was standing next to Litouten, and his stomach clenched with some of the purest and most absolute rage that he had ever felt.  
  
Homura. Their _toushin taishi_. Damn it all to hell. He had never thought that much of the kid, but he hadn't expected such a betrayal as this.  
  
---  
  
Tenpou wished it was possible to adjust his glasses. As it was, with his hands manacled behind his back, the usual small movements of his hands, the casual polishing of lenses, the little gestures of shifting his glasses up the bridge of his nose, all were impossible. He had no way to make those casual indications of how harmless he was, or to buy a few moments of time to think.  
  
_You knew he was ambitious._ Homura's eyes burned with impatience to be doing. To be killing. _You knew who he was and what he was, and you put him into this position, and you were not there when Litouten spoke to him, and Litouten has managed to deceive older men than he is, and now you may just have arranged your own death, Tenpou Gensui._ Though, come to think of it, why not simply use Nataku? What had happened in their absence?  
  
He and Kenren both went down on one knee before the Throne, before the guards could have any excuse to force them down and demonstrate their lack of proper behaviour. He was grateful for Kenren's silence.  
  
_Though right now I need a cigarette . . ._  
  
"Before your throne, Majesty, you see the two criminals," Litouten declaimed ringingly. Clearly they'd missed the beginning of the speech. Tenpou hoped the charges were going to be summarised at the end. Come to that, he hoped this wasn't going to be the sort of show trial that had the criminals brought on stage directly before their execution; he'd read about a few of those, and while they usually displayed good stage management on the part of the organisers, it reduced his and Kenren's chances.  
  
So was Litouten going to want to see them squirm, or was he going to be expedient about it?  
  
Tenpou was used to life-and-death chances, but those had always been elsewhere, Under Heaven, with weapons to hand, and not quite so utterly helpless, and not with Kenren's life so ultimately at stake besides his own. He swallowed down a moment of fear, and tried to think of it as a technical problem, as distant as his scrolls and documents. Something which he was reading about, which had happened to someone else a long time ago.   
  
His eyes strayed to Homura. The _toushin_ had no uncertainty about him at all. Idly he wondered what Litouten had promised him, and if there was any way to counter it.  
  
_Really, Marshal, you'd negotiate on the brink of death, wouldn't you?  
  
Of course I would_, he answered himself silently, and almost smiled.  
  
Litouten was coming to the end of his peroration. **Offenses against the good order of Heaven.** Well, that could fit anything. **Disobedience to proper authority.** The Great Minister, of course, being that proper authority. **Conspiracy and treasonous intention against . . .** Nice elision there; Litouten was having to work on the superlatives, but since pretty much any potential treason reflected all the way up to the Emperor himself, it could be charged as such.  
  
". . . and with the greatest of sorrow at the profound betrayal of trust inherent in the actions of these treasonous offenders against your merciful rule . . ."  
  
Something must have happened to Nataku. That was the only thing which would explain his absence. Of course, Litouten might have both toushins yoked to his rule, and deliberately have chosen Homura to execute the two of them in order to watch their faces while he did it. Still -- it seemed something of a risk, and indeed this whole affair felt a little rushed. He wondered why.  
  
_And you'd be curious on the brink of death, too?  
  
Of course._ Well, of course.  
  
". . . can only recommend their immediate execution."  
  
What a pity. Litouten was going to be expedient.  
  
Tenpou weighed his chances of a desperate appeal, and felt Kenren tensing beside him -- and then paused at the sudden deeper silence which had gripped the hall, broken by the quick pulse of striding boots on the marble floor.  
  
---  
  
It was apparently true. Goujun took the scene in at a glance. Tenpou Gensui and Kenren Taishou on their knees, his men chained like _common criminals_, and the Great Minister Litouten on the steps above them, satisfaction in every line of his face and posture. The _toushin taishi_ Homura stood nearby, large hands folded around the hilt of his drawn sword. Surprise on all their faces, even the Emperor's own, at this sudden intrusive entry of his.  
  
_Well and good._ He bridled down his rage, difficult as the task was, and strode through the silent ranks of kami towards the throne. They shifted aside, even though he stayed in the centre of the aisle, as though they could feel the blaze of his wrath from several paces distance.   
  
He stopped besides his Marshal and his General, glancing down at them for a moment to be sure that they were unharmed. A few bruises, apparently, but nothing else. The General's mouth curled into an inappropriate smirk, as though he were remembering the last time that Goujun had been forced to retrieve him from imprisonment. Perhaps he had done something to warrant it this time, as well -- no, Goujun could not believe that even he would be so foolish, or put the Marshal in this sort of danger. As for the Marshal, Tenpou Gensui's eyes were dark behind his glasses, as dark as the iron beneath the mountains, and there was something in them which was like a warning.  
  
_Foolishness. It seems I am only just in time._  
  
"Imperial Majesty," he said, and gave the proper obeisance. "I come to ask by what right two of my officers, under my command and in my service, are brought before you in this way, against the known custom of Heaven, and without the established law. They have been arrested without due process, and taken into prison without their superior officer being informed; they have been brought before you without proper trial," _a guess, but Litouten's face said it all_, "and I believe them innocent of any accusations of treason."   
  
For Tenpou Gensui might do many things, but the deliberate betrayal of Heaven was not one of them. He knew this; he remembered earlier conversations with the kami, the look in the man's eyes, the understanding and acknowledgement of responsibility.   
  
"I respectfully ask your Imperial Majesty's consideration in this matter," he finished, and waited for the Emperor's reply.  
  
Litouten turned to the _itan_ Homura, and said simply, "Cut him down."  
  
And apparently the Great Minister had lost his mind before the whole court . . .  
  
Homura moved in a flicker of motion, as quick as a serpent, and   
  
_this doesn't happen_  
  
his blade slid into Goujun's chest   
  
_this can't happen_  
  
and blood ran out down the blade and onto the hilt and this was impossible, a dragon could not be slain so easily. He raised a hand to catch at the sword, but weakness was pulling him down to the ground, and he knew more than felt himself slip to his knees as the sword slid out of him again.  
  
The _toushin_ Homura was looking down at him with a strange mixture of humour and casual efficiency, as though killing one of the dragon kings  
  
_but we can't just die like this_  
  
were nothing more than any piece of slaughter. Tenpou and Kenren were both saying something, he could hear them through the hammering of his blood in his ears, and as he slumped further down he saw Tenpou's face for a moment. The sheer appalled rage in the kami's eyes was clear and absolute, and self-directed as much as at Litouten and the _toushin_.   
  
So this was what it was like when Heaven fell.  
  
_My brothers. If not . . ._  
  
It was darker than the deepest seas here. He had come to protect his men, he had business here that was not yet finished. Goujun was still trying to speak when the silence finally closed over him.  
  
---  
  
"You bastard!" Kenren struggled to get to his feet, never mind the Emperor, never mind propriety and everything else that went with it, never mind any hope of proper appeal or mercy. He just wanted to reach Homura and wipe that stinking _ignorant_ smile off his mouth. His action took the guards by surprise, stunned as they still were, and he managed to be standing face to face with Homura before they could jostle into action. "He never did anything to you," he spat at the _toushin_.  
  
Homura shrugged, and didn't even bother to take a step backwards, as though to emphasise Kenren's utter irrelevance. He shrugged. That was all.  
  
The guards had him by the shoulders now, and forced him down to his knees again. Goujun lay in front of him and Tenpou -- _what, you felt you had to go first or something, Goujun-sama? Really, it wasn't necessary_ -- and the blood that stained his white raiment was the same shade as his open, blank crimson eyes.  
  
Litouten had taken a couple of steps up towards the Emperor, and was speaking hastily and quietly, just a shade too softly for Kenren to hear. Justifying his actions, probably. Promising evidence that Goujun was implicated. Getting permission to go on to the main event.  
  
He tilted a glance sideways, and saw that the guards were restraining Tenpou as well, their hands forcing his shoulders down so that he couldn't even try to get to his feet. _Well, screw that escape attempt. Hell, we were screwed anyhow._  
  
Tenpou looked up and met his eyes. There was the blazing anger which he knew so well how to recognise, yes, humming like a wheel in a millrace, but there was also something which he was less used to, and that was the other's knowledge of failure. He remembered Tenpou's voice once. _It happened that I let a man of mine die . . ._  
  
"Hey," he said softly, under the buzz of horrified whispered conversation, "I knew what I was doing, right? Now if a certain officer of mine had done what I wanted him to and kept his sorry ass out of trouble --"  
  
"Hnh." Something went out of Tenpou's face, leaving behind the anger and the intelligence and all the other things he had known, but no longer that dreadful despair. "Still . . ." He nodded towards the Dragon King. "I wish . . ."  
  
"Yeah." Kenren left it at that.  
  
"Execute the sentence." Litouten had turned away from the Emperor, and was giving orders again. Kenren glanced at the Minister for a moment, then looked away. He wouldn't give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing his last resentment. He glared up at Homura instead.  
  
_I always thought it'd be on the battlefield Down Under, or maybe in a pretty woman's bed. Figures that I had to screw up._  
  
"Any last words?" Homura asked, balancing the sword between his hands as though it weighed nothing at all. Lighter than a feather. _Heavier than a mountain? No. He doesn't know anything about that._ Probably he was supposed to gratify Litouten with a plea for mercy, or the Court with some sort of last words to Tenpou, or Homura himself by just looking up at him.  
  
"I hope your next fucking cup of wine chokes you," Kenren said, and looked down at the ground in front of him.  
  
Darkness.  
  
---  
  
Perhaps the blood would stain the floor permanently; there was enough of it to gratify Litouten's wildest dreams of shaking Heaven. Tenpou chose not to look at what was left of Kenren after that single downward blow of Homura's sword.  
  
He looked around him instead, at the courtiers shocked into silence, the Emperor on his throne as though it removed him from the rest of the Universe, the marble of the ceiling and the walls, the sleeves of his guards and their hands on his shoulders, Litouten smiling and smiling and smiling as though he would never stop, Goujun-sama still with that expression of surprise and astonishment on his face, the blood that was slowly staining its way across the white skirts of his own lab coat, as though he were a man packing his bags for a long journey.  
  
Homura sauntered over to stand beside him. The _toushin_'s sword was a beautiful thing, a flame forged into the shape of a blade, with ripples moving down it like dragons twisting deep within.   
  
"A pity," he said quietly, too softly for Litouten to catch the words unless the Minister chose to strain to hear. "But we all knew this sort of thing might happen. I'll make sure it's quick. The least I can do for you, Marshal."  
  
Tenpou met Homura's eyes, and they were full of fire. Half a dozen things to say spiralled through his mind, but he set them aside one after the other, all of them too petty or too small against the immensity of this change, this shaking of the foundations of Heaven. _You don't realise what you're doing, and I am not sure which of us to blame for this; me for offering it to you, Litouten for giving you a better price, you for listening to both of us, or all of us for creating this between us and letting it play itself out. I could pity you. You're going to have to live in what you've helped make._  
  
"It won't be quick," Tenpou said. _These things will work themselves out, and the only thing I know now is that blood will be involved._ There was a ripple of movement and voices at the edge of the hall. He paid it no heed, and turned his eyes from Homura to look at Goujun-sama instead. It was another piece of anger to take with him; that this person, the least involved, the one who had chosen nevertheless to act for what he believed to be the proper reasons, the proper order of Heaven and Earth, had been the first to pay. "But I will remember the thought in any case --"  
  
Darkness.  
  
---  
  
_The child enters the chamber at a run, panting and gasping, having followed the furious presence in white -- _scary_ -- who knew so precisely where he was going. He fights his way through the legs of the courtiers in front of him, the guards, the mob, to see the blood and the bodies._  
  
"Ken nii-chan. Ten-chan . . ."  
  
_The _itan_ screams. The burning inside him will not accept this. It runs through his body in rioting fire until the diadem around his head is singing with the force of its vibration, taut against his skin and   
  
shaking  
  
itself  
  
to  
  
pieces  
  
and it flies apart and the sound as its broken pieces ring against the marble floor cuts through the commotion of his unseemly entrance and is audible even through his scream.  
  
The air around him is full of heat. People are burning.  
  
The monster smiles. Chaos is loose in Heaven._  
  
---  
  
Homura looked up as he shook the blood from his sword, and moved one casually fastidious foot away from the spreading pool on the floor, wondering what the confusion over towards the door was. He recognised the child, of course -- the little _itan_ pet of Konzen Douji's -- and for a moment he spared a fragment of pity that the child should see such things. Reason enough for him to scream. Reason enough for him to cry.  
  
Perhaps someone should summon Konzen Douji to take his pet away.  
  
The blast of raging energy which abruptly roiled around the _itan_ shattered the crowd like a stroke of lightning, sending them running in all directions, screaming and babbling like sheep. Homura leaned on his sword, and curiously watched the guards running towards the _itan_ a bare second later; just as much sheep in their own way, easily directed and commanded.  
  
He looked down at the bodies at his feet. _And I -- I am the wolf of Heaven . . ._  
  
There was barely time for him to react, barely even time for him to register surprise. The _itan_ came through the soldiers like a child running through flowers, ripping them apart as he ran, and any courtiers who had not yet managed to get out of the way, all of them, casually, eagerly, his eyes glittering and golden and far stranger even than the youkai whom Homura had cut down in the past. Blood trailed from his long-nailed hands, dewing the bodies which he left behind, and he came for Litouten with all the speed and grace of a perfect storm.  
  
Homura brought his blade up in a low sweep, and it rang against the _itan_'s claws, and the air around the two of them hummed in sympathy.  
  
Litouten was screaming for help. Yes, that was it. He was calling Homura to defend him, and truly, Homura would have listened, but he had no time to do so, because now he was fighting for his life.  
  
_And -- and he isn't even particularly trying to kill me -- he just wants to get past me --_  
  
This was wrong. He was the _toushin taishi_ and this could not be happening.  
  
If he had previously thought that he was fast, he was now taught otherwise. One moment the creature was directly in front of him, clawing at his face, and he had to parry and twist aside, and the next moment it was curving round him, moving _too fast_, and he had to spin and drop and try a neck-or-nothing strike to force the other a pace back, and only in the next breath did he feel the cool air against his skin of his back, and the fresh running blood where a long claw had sliced skin open.  
  
Footsteps behind him, running away. Litouten trying to escape, of course, and why should the Great Minister stay and hold his ground when there was a _toushin_ here to do the killing for him? Except --  
  
The creature jumped directly over him, hanging poised in the air for a single long breath, just that fraction too fast for Homura to be able to stop him. It took Litouten down as a hound takes down a hare, coming down on him in a bright flurry of teeth and claws that only gave the Great Minister time for a brief scream.  
  
---  
  
Konzen stood in the archway and watched the butchery.  
  
His aunt's voice echoed in his mind, returned to haunt him now that it was too late.   
  
_this animal -- ferocious for all that it's so small_  
  
"Gokuu," he said.  
  
It had taken too long to follow the child, let alone the Dragon King, and then the great crowd trying to flee through the doors, forcing him back and making him fight for every step forward as he had never had to fight before, _Konzen Douji the Bodhisattva's nephew_, and all of it to find them all dead, and this transformed Gokuu playing in the blood. The Emperor fled, and all those courtiers or officers with any sense gone with him, and all the rest dead. Dead, here in Heaven. Killed. Slain. By Gokuu.  
  
There wasn't supposed to be death in Heaven; it was not how things were. Someone must have invited it in, held the door open to let it come walking down the marble corridors and leave this unseemly   
  
_I will not let the magnitude of what has happened touch me, I will not let it stop me, but how can such a thing happen, how can all the laws be broken, how can people I know be turned into lumps of flesh_  
  
foulness behind it.  
  
Tenpou. Kenren Taishou. Goujun-sama. Goujun-sama at least was seemly in his death, and might have been sleeping if not for the blood.  
  
Blood was everywhere. It was so omnipresent that it almost overran the senses and became merely part of the background, as natural as the silk and marble.  
  
Tenpou and Kenren -- their heads were separate from their bodies  
  
_but that would mean they're dead_  
  
and the bodies were lumps of meat, but the faces, the faces were still recognisable, still open-eyed, and it seemed so utterly _wrong_ that heads could be separate from bodies like that and it meant that they were dead  
  
_and they're gone_  
  
and this was not a thing that could happen in Heaven.  
  
Konzen held himself together and clung to composure, wrapping himself in it for as long as was necessary.  
  
"Gokuu!" he called, louder. He could see the _toushin_ Homura standing to one side, breathing in great gasps of air, blood running from a long gash across his back, a burning sword unsheathed between his hands.   
  
Gokuu turned to look at him, golden eyes slitted and fey.  
  
"Stupid monkey." His sandals were loud on the marble floor as he walked towards the child. "I told you to stay with me."  
  
"Don't." Homura's voice cut through the air like a blow. "It's insane. Stay back."  
  
"What? So you can . . ." He nearly said, _kill him_, and then he looked at Homura's eyes for the first time, saw the blazing rage and offended pride and sheer fear-spawned horror there, and realised that was exactly what Homura wanted to do. "No," he answered himself, and his voice made the air tremble just as Homura's had done.  
  
"It's insane."  
  
"He's Gokuu," Konzen said, and deliberately turned away.   
  
A breath of air rippled through the room as Homura raised his sword again. "Don't be a fool, Konzen Douji."  
  
Konzen looked at Gokuu now, at the child he had thought that he knew. The stupid monkey. The little creature from Down Below where things were simpler. He didn't have the time to spare for regrets for Tenpou or Kenren or even Goujun-sama now; their deaths seemed all of a piece with this greater devastation, all of it embodied in this sudden change in Gokuu from natural kindness to bloodstained smiles.  
  
_Can I be the sun for you? It's the other way round. Stupid monkey, did you think you could leave me behind that easily?_  
  
"Gokuu," he called. "Get over here! You and I have unfinished business."  
  
Gokuu moved in a quick gust of wind, faster than Konzen's eyes could follow, and was standing in front of him an instant later. There was still no recognition in his eyes; he tilted his head like a child who has seen a new toy, and reached one hand out towards Konzen's hair.  
  
The stench of blood filled Konzen's nostrils, and he struggled not to gag. In what was simple instinct rather than calculated thought, he reached out to touch Gokuu's forehead, to try to calm him.  
  
_this animal_  
  
Homura's cry of warning came at the same moment as Gokuu's blow, a long-clawed swipe that cut across Konzen's body from breastbone to hip, that ran across him like a scream of agony and took the strength from him and left him falling to the floor. Stupid -- the provoked animal reacted on instinct too, it saw you move, it hit out -- Gokuu, you idiot, how am I to look after you if you keep on doing things like this --  
  
-- and now the pain was going away and taking the sunlight with it, but it was too soon, he had to look after Gokuu, and he hadn't finished, he hadn't _finished_, damn it . . .  
  
---  
  
The creature turned away from Konzen Douji's body to look at Homura again.  
  
Well, that settled it. It was insane. It had struck down the only person who had tried -- who would try -- to treat it like a rational entity. Homura knew his duty.   
  
"Gokuu," Homura said, his voice caressing, and watched it focus on him.  
  
_But the wound on his back was bleeding, and it said, the creature is faster than you, this creature is stronger than you, and if you go against it you will die._  
  
"No. No, I will _not_ be made light of again." He spoke as much to himself as to the monster. He had set aside these fears when he chose to take Litouten's offer, when he accepted his position and power. He was no longer the child who sat in a prison cell and dreamed of sunlight, no longer the powerless wanderer of Heaven, no longer -- and it had been so long since he thought of her -- the lover who had been helpless to save Rinrei. He was Homura, and the word _Homura_ meant _power_ now to anyone with understanding. "I am Homura, I am _toushin taishi_, and you have offended Heaven."   
  
His words rang in the quiet chamber.   
  
_And as I break you,_ he vowed, _so I shall break Heaven and anyone who dares resist me._  
  
It attacked in a whirl of claws, each blow hard enough to stagger him, and first he was retreating one pace, then two, and each step was a fracture in the wall of his courage.  
  
_Step._ A blow. A line of blood. The knowledge that it could touch him. _Step._ Another blow. Muscle ripped. The knowledge that he could be touched. _Step._ And the darkness was waiting behind him, the silence of prison walls, the knowledge of helplessness, and _still_ he could not reach it, he could not wound it, he could not even make it hesitate.  
  
It had no fear of the flame of his sword -- no, it had no fear of anything of his, it had no fear of him. It was not a thing of Heaven.  
  
Thoughts fluttered and stormed like bats. If he could not defeat this creature, what then? He was the _toushin_, Heaven's executioner, the warrior dipped in blood, the powerful one --   
  
_Litouten's tool_, something at the back of his mind whispered, _or the tool of anyone who chose to use you_  
  
-- the strong one admired by all --  
  
_the sword feared by those who feared your master_  
  
-- respected --  
  
_feared_  
  
-- powerful --  
  
_as powerless as ever_  
  
-- the man --  
  
_the child._  
  
Perhaps, perhaps if he released his own shackles . . .   
  
The thought in itself was a great widening breach in the wall of his determination, an realisation of defeat. The fraction of hesitation which came with it was enough for the creature to grasp his left arm at elbow and wrist, and twist it till bone and sinew cracked and tore, and it smiled at his cry of agony, it _smiled_, and it didn't even know who he was, it couldn't care less who he was, the word _Homura_ meant nothing to it, it simply struck down an enemy. It tore at his flesh and he bled, it slammed its fists into him and his bones shattered, it beat at him and he knew that he had lost and that he was as void of power as he had ever been. It struck him down to the floor and it wound its hands into his chains as a child might, and he did not have the strength to try to force the biting chain from his own throat as the world slowly flowered into light.  
  
_Why should help come now?_ Homura wondered slowly as the light took the creature in its hands and cast it down to the floor and tamed it once again. _. It's too late. They've all gone. And life is full of partings._  
  
---

Fanfiction Page 


	19. Bindings

Bindings   
  
The Bodhisattva walked among the corpses; hir white, white feet were silent on the stained floor.  
  
Everything seemed to be shrouded in blood now. Homura lay on the floor, dragged down by pain and weariness, and looked around him at the enactments of ruin. The creature -- _itan_, monster, child, monkey, manifestation of the power of chaos -- lay near the Emperor's empty throne, set aside there carefully by Kanzeon Bosatsu. A gold diadem shone on its forehead again, and it slept like a weary child, face tense and troubled.  
  
Se had not troubled to clean the blood from its hands or mouth.  
  
There were so many bodies. He recognised faces here and there among the dead courtiers, the fallen soldiers; this one had cringed as he passed, that one had laughed when he thought himself unobserved, those empty eyes had been alive less than an hour ago.   
And, of course, the bodies that se now knelt beside. Hir nephew Konzen -- well, perhaps there had been some affection there, not that he had ever seen it in either. The womanish long hair was matted with blood now, the thin lips half open as though still trying to complain or interject. The body slumped loosely, relaxed for once, opened up from shoulder to hip in a single stroke of claws.  
  
Fire burned at the edges of Homura's vision. He blinked, and tried to breathe. Something in his chest hurt when he moved.  
  
_Is it going to stop now? Is it all going to stop?_  
  
Two headless bodies. One in black. One in white. The General had been furious, still struggling. _Damn him too._ The Marshal had held himself still, had gone down on his knees with something like grace, but his eyes had been iron, cold iron, looking at the future and accepting it and bending his head to it, and still raging, still saying _this is not yet finished_.  
  
Oh yes. The other one. Goujun, the Dragon King. Dead by his hand as well.  
  
He hadn't been important.  
  
But he'd looked so surprised.  
  
And Litouten. But that hadn't been Homura's doing.  
  
The Bodhisattva rose from hir knees. Light danced around hir like lotus petals, like flames, like ghosts. Se walked towards where Homura lay, bare feet still silent, and hir hair blew behind hir in a wind that he could not feel.  
  
"You did nothing," he accused hir.  
  
The dark eyes watched him.   
  
"You saw all of this and you did nothing." Nobody else in the hall was breathing except for him, for hir, and for the _itan_ creature. "Bloodstained whore."  
  
Se cupped her hands. Light unfolded between them, a lotus bud that unfolded into a flower and glowed like nacre. "They died as they died," se said. "Resenting. Angry. Still bound by duty. Still bound by affection. Does that matter to you?"  
  
"You did _nothing_. You came too late." Words filled his mouth like bile, and he spat them at hir. "You stopped that creature, but only when everyone was already dead. Does that matter to _you_?"  
  
"Of course it matters." Se moved one shoulder. "Of course it doesn't matter."  
  
"He was your nephew and you let him die."  
  
Kanzeon Bosatsu swayed in the wind that played with hir hair and tugged at hir silks. "I did. He faced his death and went to meet it and I didn't stop him. He knew what he wanted and he still wants it. What do you want, Homura?"  
  
Se had never called him by his name before, never even spoken to him. It would have been easier if se had called him _toushin taishi_. The _toushin_ was a man who knew what he wanted and who bargained for power and who could kill.  
  
"I want it to have been different."  
  
He coughed. There was blood.  
  
"Ah no. That I can't do." Se knelt down beside him, the flower still between hir hands. Behind hir, the hall was unreal, a ghostly room of marble and corpses, like memories cut down and kept for pain. "Ask me for something else, Homura."  
  
_Put me back in the darkness and leave me there for another thousand years. There at least I could dream that things might be different. Now I know that they can't. We try. We fail. It comes to this._ "Hope is illusion," he said. "Get away from me." _Put me back in the darkness._  
  
The lotus rippled in hir hands; became four-petalled, spun into a circle of light, shrank to a bud again, to a flame, was gone. "Everything is illusion," se answered. "Everything is real. The choice is yours and always will be."  
  
"Get away from me." He had no strength left to move, but only bitterness and anger that let him meet hir eyes. "You're an illusion. This is all illusion. Heaven and gods and all of this. I knew what I wanted . . ." His voice broke, and he swallowed blood. "This is your fault."  
  
"Hush." Se leaned forward. Hir hair brushed against his face as se kissed his forehead, lips hot against the kami mark there.  
  
Slowly the light began to fade, as shadows crept in around him. The body's pain eased, draining away like water, taking his anger with it, leaving the silence and the knowledge to accompany him down into sleep.  
  
He saw the Bodhisattva walking among the corpses, white feet silent on the stained floor as se carried the child out of the hall. Se did not look back at him.  
  
---

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